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GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



BOOKS BY PRICE COLLIER 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Germany and the Germans . . «e/ $1.50 

The West in the East net 1.50 

England and the English . . . net 1.50 



GERMANY AND THE GEEMANS 

FROM 

AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



BY 

PRICE COLLIER 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
NEW YORK : : : : 1913 






Copyright, 1913, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published May, 1913 





©CI.A347485 



^0 

]MY \MFE KATHARINE 

WHOSE DESERVING FAR OUTSTRIPS XIY GIVING 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER TAOm 

Introduction ix 

I. The Cradle of Modern Ger- 
many 1 

II. Frederick the Great to Bis- 
marck 46 

III. The Indiscreet 105 

IV. German Political Parties and 

THE Press 156 

V. Berlin 211 

VI. "A Land OF Damned Professors" 275 

VII. The Distaff Side 335 

VIII. "Ohne Armee kein Deutsch- 

land" 410 

IX. German Problems 461 

X. "From Envy, Hatred, and Mal- 
ice" 525 

XI. Conclusion 580 



INTRODUCTION 

The first printed suggestion that America 
should be called America came from a German. 
Martin Waldseemiiller, of Freiburg, in his Cos- 
mographico Introductio, published in 1507, wrote: 
" I do not see why any one may justly forbid it to 
be named after Americus, its discoverer, a man 
of sagacious mind, Amerige, that is the land of 
Americus or America, since both Europe and 
Asia derived their names from women." 

The first complete ship-load of Germans left 
Gravesend July the 2-lth, 1683, and arrived in 
Philadelphia October the 6th, 1683. They set- 
tled in Germantown, or, as it was then called, 
on account of the poverty of the settlers, Armen- 
town. 

Up to within the last few j'^ears the majority 
of our settlers have been Teutonic in blood and 
Protestant in religion. The English, Dutch, 
Swedes, Germans, Scotch-Irish, who settled in 
America, were all, less than two thousand years 
ago, one Germanic race from the country sur- 
rounding the North Sea. 

Since 18^20 more than .),'-200,000 Germans have 



X INTRODUCTION 

settled in America. This immigration of Ger- 
mans has practically ceased, and it is a serious 
loss to America, for it has been replaced by a 
much less desirable type of settler. In 1882 
western Europe sent us 563,174 settlers, or 87 
per cent., while southern and eastern Europe and 
Asiatic Turkey sent 83,637, or 13 per cent. In 
1905 western Europe sent 215,863, or 21.7 per 
cent., and southern and eastern Europe and 
Asiatic Turkey, 808,856, or 78.9 per cent, of our 
new population. In 1910 there were 8,282,618 
white persons of German origin in the United 
States; 2,501,181 were born in Germany; 3,911,- 
847 were born in the United States, both of 
whose parents were born in Germany; 1,869,590 
were born in the United States, one parent born 
in the United States and one in Germany. 

Not only have we been enriched by this mass 
of sober and industrious people in the past, but 
Peter Muhlenberg, Christopher Ludwig, Steu- 
ben, John Kalb, George Herkimer, and later 
Francis Lieber, Carl Schurz, Sigel, Osterhaus, 
Abraham Jacobi, Herman Ridder, Oswald Ot- 
tendorfer, Adolphus Busch, Isidor, Nathan, and 
Oscar Straus, Jacob Schiff, Otto Kahn, Fred- 
erick Weyerheuser, Charles P. Steinmetz, Claus 
Spreckels, Hugo Mlinsterberg, and a catalogue 
of others, have been leaders in finance, in in- 



INTRODUCTION xi 

(lustry, in war, in politics, in educational and 
pliilantliropic enterprises, and in patriotism. 

The framework of our republican institutions, 
as I have tried to outline in this volume, came 
from the "Woods of Germany." Professor II. A. 
L. Fisher, of Oxford, writes: "European repub- 
licanism, which ever since the French Revolution 
has been in the main a phenomenon of the Latin 
races, was a creature of Teutonic civilization in 
the age of the sea-beggars and the Roundheads. 
The half-Latin city of Geneva was the source of 
that stream of democratic opinion in church and 
state, which, flowing to England under Queen 
Elizabeth, was repelled by persecution to Hol- 
land, and thence directed to the continent of 
North America." 

In these later days Goethe, in a letter to Eck- 
ermann, prophesied the building of the Panama 
Canal by the Americans, and also the prodigious 
growth of the United States toward the West. 

In a private collection in New York, is an auto- 
graph letter of George Washington to Frederick 
the Great, asking that Frederick should use his 
influence to protect that French friend of Amer- 
ica, Lafayette. 

In Schiller's house in Weimar there still hangs 
an engraving of the battle of Bunker Hill, by 
Miiller, a German, and a friend of the poc^l. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Bismarck's intimate friend as a student at 
Gottingen, and the man of whom he spoke with 
warm affection all his life, was the American his- 
torian Motley. 

The German soldiers in our Civil War were 
numbered by the thousands. We have many 
ties with Germany, quite enough, indeed, to 
make a bare enumeration of them a sufficient 
introduction to this volume. 

On more than one occasion of late I have been 
introduced in places, and to persons, where a 
slight picture of what I was to meet when the 
doors were thrown open was of great help to 
me. I was told beforehand something of the his- 
tory, traditions, the forms and ceremonies, and 
even something of the weaknesses and peculiar- 
ities of the society, the persons, and the person- 
ages. I am not so wise a guide as some of my 
sponsors have been, but it is something of the 
kind that I have wished and planned to do for 
my countrymen. I have tried to make this book, 
not a guidebook, certainly not a history ; rather, 
in the words of Bacon, "grains of salt, which 
will rather give an appetite than offend with 
satiety," a sketch, in short, of what is on the 
other side of the great doors when the announcer 
speaks your name and you enter Germany. 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 

I 

THE CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

EIGIITY-ONE years before the discovery 
of America, seventy-two years before 
Luther was born, and forty-one years be- 
fore the discovery of printing, in the year 1411, 
the Emperor Sigismund, the betrayer of Huss, 
transferred the Mark of Brandenburg to his 
faithful vassal and cousin, Frederick, sixth Bur- 
grave of Nuremberg. Nuremberg was at one 
time one of the great trading towns between 
Germany, Venice, and the East, and the home 
later of Hans Sachs. Frederick was the lineal 
descendant of Conrad of Hohenzollcrn, the first 
Burgrave of Nuremberg, who lived in the days 
of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1189); and this 
Conrad is the twenty-fifth lineal ancestor of 
Emperor WiUiam II of Germany. It is interest- 
ing to remember in this connection that when 



2 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

we count back our progenitors to the twenty- 
first generation, they number something over 
two miUions. When we trace an ancestry so 
far, therefore, we must know something of the 
multitude from which the individual is descended, 
if we are to gather anything of value concerning 
his racial characteristics. The solace of all gen- 
ealogical investigation is the infallible discovery, 
that the greatest among us began in a small 
way. 

If you paddle up the Elbe and the Havel from 
Hamburg to Potsdam, you will find yourself in 
the territory conquered from the heathen Wends 
in the days of Henry I, the Fowler (918-935), 
which was the cradle of what is now the German 
Empire. 

The Emperor Sigismund, who was often em- 
barrassed financially by reason of his wars and 
journey ings, had borrowed some four hundred 
thousand gold florins from Frederick, and it was 
in settlement of this debt that he mortgaged 
the territory of Brandenburg, and on the 8th of 
April, 1417, the ceremony of enfeoffment was 
performed at Constance, by which the House of 
Hohenzollern became possessed of this territory, 
and was thereafter included among the great 
electorates having a vote in the election of the 
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 3 

It was Ilonricus Auccps, or Henry the Fowler, 
(so called because the envoys sent to offer him 
the crown, found him on his estates in the Hartz 
Mountains among his falcons), who fought off 
the Danes in the northwest, and the Slavonians, 
or Wends, in the northeast, and the Hungarians 
in the southeast, and established frontier posts 
or marks for permanent protection against their 
ravages. These marks, or marches, which were 
boundary lines, were governed by markgrafs or 
marquises, and finally gave the name of marks 
to the territory itself. The word is historically 
familiar from its still later use in noting the old 
boundaries between England and Scotland, and 
England and Wales, which are still called marks. 

Henry the Fowler was also called Henry *'the 
City Builder." After the death of the last of 
the Charlemagne line of rulers, the Franks 
elected Conrad, Duke of Franconia, to succeed 
to the throne, and he on his death-bed advised 
his people to choose Henry of Saxony to succeed, 
for the times were stormy and the country 
needed a strong ruler. The Hungarians in the 
southeast, and the Wends, the old Slavonic 
population of Poland, were pillaging and harry- 
ing more and more successfully, and the more 
successfully the more impudently. Henry be- 
gan llic building of slrong-wallod, doep-moaled 



4 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cities along his frontier, and made one, drawn by 
lot, out of every ten families of the countryside, 
go to live in these fortified towns. Their rulers 
were burgraves, or city counts. Titles now 
so largely ornamental were then descriptive of 
duties and responsibilities. 

In the light of their future greatness, it is well 
to take note of these two frontier counties, or 
marches. The first, called the Northern March, 
or March of Brandenburg, was the religious 
centre of the Slavs, and was situated in the midst 
of forests and marshes just beyond the Elbe. 
This March of Brandenburg was won from the 
Slavs in the first instance by the Saxons and 
Franks of the Saxon plain. When the bur- 
grave, Frederick of HohenzoUern, came to take 
possession of his new territory he was received 
with the jesting remark: "Were it to rain bur- 
graves for a whole year, we should not allow 
them to grow in the march." But Frederick's 
soldiers and money, and his Nuremberg jewels, 
as his cannon were called, ended by gaining 
complete control, a control in more powerful 
hands to-day than ever before. 

The second, called the Eastern or Austrian 
March, was situated in the basin of the Danube. 
These two great states were formed in lands 
that had ceased to be German and had be- 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 5 

come Slav or Finnisli territory. The fighting 
appetite of the German tribes, and tlie spirit of 
chivahy later, which had drawn men in other 
days in France to the East, in Spain against the 
Moors, in Normandy against England, were of- 
fered an opportunity and an outlet in Germany, 
by forays and fighting against the Finns and 
Slavs. 

Out of the conquest and settlement of these 
territories grew, what we know to-day, as the 
German Empire and the Austrian Empire. Out 
of their margraves, who were at first sentinel 
officers guarding the outer boundaries of the 
empire, and mere nominees of the Emperor, 
have developed the Emperor of Germany and 
the Emperor of Austria, the one ruling over the 
most powerful nation, the other the head of the 
most exclusive court, in Europe. 

When a man becomes a power in the world, 
these days, our first impulse is to ask about his 
ancestry. Who were his father and his mother; 
what and who were his grandfathers and grand- 
mothers, and who were their forebears. Where 
did they come from, what was the climate; did 
they live by the sea, or in the mountains, or in 
the plains. We are at once hot on the trail of his 
success. Be he an American, we wish to know 
whether his people came from Holland, from 



6 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

France, from England, or from Belgium; where 
did they settle, in New England, in New York, 
or in the South. We no longer accept ability as 
a miracle, but investigate it as an evolution. If 
the man be great enough, cities vie with each 
other to claim him as their child; he acquires 
an Homeric versatility in cradles. 

Whatever one may think of William II of 
Germany, he is just now the predominating 
figure in Europe, if not in the world. This must 
be our excuse for a word or two concerning the 
race from which came his twenty-fifth lineal 
ancestor. 

It is exactly five hundred years since his pres- 
ent empire was founded in the sandy plains 
about the Elbe, and a thousand years before 
that brings us to the dim dawn of any histori- 
cal knowledge whatever about the Germans. 
When the Cimbrians and Teutonians came into 
contact with the Romans, in 113 B. C, is the 
beginning of all things for these people. In 
that year the inhabitants of the north of Italy 
awoke one morning to find a swarm of blue- 
eyed, light-haired, long-limbed strangers coming 
down from the Alps upon them. The younger 
and more light-hearted warriors came tobog- 
ganing down the snow-covered mountain-sides 
on their shields. They had been crowded out 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 7 

of what is now Switzerland, and called them- 
selves, though they were much alike in appear- 
ance, the Cimbri and the Teutones. They de- 
feated the Roman armies sent against them, 
and, turning to the south and west, went on 
their way along the north shores of the Med- 
iterranean into what is now France. They had 
no history of their own. Tacitus WTites that 
they could neither read nor write: "Literarum 
secreta viri pariter ac feminse ignorant." Very 
little is to be found concerning them in the 
Roman writers. The books of Pliny which 
treated of this time are lost. It w^as toward the 
middle of the century before Christ that Caesar 
advanced to the frontier of w^hat may be called 
Germany. He met and conquered there these 
men of the blood who were to conquer Rome, 
and to carry on the name under the title of the 
Holy Roman Empire. Caesar met the ancestors 
of those who were to be Caesars, and with an eye 
on Roman politics, wrote the "Commentaries," 
w^hich were really autobiographical messages, 
with the Germans as a text and an excuse. 

Tacitus, born just about one hundred years 
after the death of Caesar, and who had access to 
the lost works of Pliny, was a moralist historian 
and a warm friend of the Germans. Over their 
shoulders he rapped the manners and morals of 



8 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

his own countrymen. "Vice is not treated by 
the Germans" (German, the etymologists say, 
is composed of Ger, meaning spear or lance, and 
Man, meaning chief or lord; Deutsch, or Teutsch, 
comes from the Gothic word Thiudu, meaning 
nation, and a Deutscher, or Teutscher, meant one 
belonging to the nation), he tells his countrymen, 
"as a subject of raillery, nor is the profligacy of 
corrupting and being corrupted called the fash- 
ion of the age." With Rooseveltian enthusiasm 
he writes that the Germans consider it a crime 
"to set limits to population, by rearing up only a 
certain number of children and destroying the 
rest." 

The republicanism of Europe and America 
had its roots in this Teutonic civilization. "No 
man dictates to the assembly; he may persuade 
but cannot command. When anything is ad- 
vanced not agreeable to the people, they reject 
it with a general murmur. If the proposition 
pleases, they brandish their javelins. This is 
their highest and most honorable mark of ap- 
plause; they assent in a military manner, and 
praise by the sound of their arms," continues 
our author. 

The great historian of the Roman historians, 
and of Rome, Gibbon, lends his authority to this 
praise of Tacitus in the sentence: "The most 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 9 

civilized nalioiis ul' inoderii Eur()i)c issued from 
the woods of Germany; and in the rude institu- 
tions of tliose barbarians we may still distin- 
guish the original principles of our present laws 
and manners." 

Rome, which was not only a city, a nation, an 
empire, but a religion; Rome, which replied to a 
suggestion that the people of Latium should be 
admitted to citizenship, "Thou hast heard, 
O Jupiter, the impious words that have come 
from this man's mouth. Canst thou tolerate, 
O Jupiter, that a foreigner should come to sit in 
the sacred temple as a senator, as a consul?" 
Rome welcomed later the barbarians from the 
woods of Germany not only as citizens and con- 
suls, but as emperors; and their descendants 
rule the world. 

It was no Capuan training that finally dis- 
tilled itself in a Charlemagne, an Otho, a Luther, 
a Frederick the Great, and a Bismarck; in an 
Alfred, a William the Conqueror, a Cromwell, a 
Clive, a Rhodes, or a Gordon; in a Washington, 
a Lincoln, a Grant, a Jackson, and a Lee. 

Beyond the certified beyond, we see dimly 
through the mists of history, hosts of men march- 
ing, ever marching from the east, spreading some 
toward Norway and Sweden, some skirting the 
Baltic Sea to the south; driving their caltle 



10 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

before them, and learning the arts of peace 
and war, and self-government, from the harsh 
school-masters of pressing needs and tyrannical 
circumstances, the only teachers that confer de- 
grees of permanent value. They become fisher- 
men and small landholders in Sweden, Norway, 
and Denmark. "Jeudi," or Jupiter's day, be- 
comes their god Thor's day, or Thursday; 
"Mardi," or Mars's day, is their Tin's day, or 
Tuesday; "Mercredi," or Mercury's day, is 
Odin's or Woden's day, or Wednesday. 

These men trained to solitude in small bands, 
owing to the geographical exigencies of their 
northern country, become the founders of the 
particularist or individualistic nations. Great 
Britain and the United States among others. 
Those who had gone south, driven by pressure 
from behind, follow the Danube to the north 
and west, find the Rhine, and push on into what 
is now southwestern Europe. 

It is worth noting that the Rhine and the 
Danube have their sources near together, and 
form a line of water from the North Sea to the 
Black Sea, a significant line in Europe from the 
beginning down to this day. This line of water 
divides not only lands but nations, manners, 
customs, and even speech, and what we call the 
North, and what we call the South, may be said 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 11 

to }k\ willi ncgligil)lc exceptions, what is nortli 
and what is soiitli of those two rivers. It is and 
always has been the Mason and Dixon's line of 
Europe. 

All of these peoples mould their institutions, 
from the habits and customs forced upon them 
by their surroundings. The members of the 
tribe of the Suevi, now Swabians, were not al- 
lowed to hold fixed landed possessions, but were 
forced to exchange with each other from time to 
time, so that no one should become w^eddcd to the 
soil and grow rich thereby. Readers of history 
will remember, that Lycurgus attempted similar 
legislation among the Spartans, hoping thus to 
keep them simple and hardy, and fit for war. 

How many hundreds of years, these various 
tribes were working out their rude political and 
domestic laws, no man knows. The imaginative 
historian pushes his way through the mists, and 
sees that the tribes who lived in the Scandinavian 
peninsula were forced by their cramped territory 
to become fishermen and sailors, and cultivators 
of small areas of land, accustomed therefore 
to rule themselves in small groups, and hence 
independent and markedly individualist. Such 
historians divide even these rude tribes sharply 
between the patriarchal and the particularist. 
The particularist comnuuie developed from the 



12 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

estate which was self-sufficient, isolated, and 
independent. When they were associated to- 
gether it was for special and limited purposes, 
so that independence might be infringed upon 
to the least possible extent. The patriarchal 
commune, on the other hand, proceeded from the 
communal family which provided everything for 
everybody. It was a general and compulsory 
partnership, monopolizing every kind of business 
that might arise. The particularist group then, 
and their moral and political descendants now, 
strive to organize public authority, and public 
life in such a way, that they are distinctly sub- 
ordinate to private and individual independence. 
In the one the Emperor is the father of the 
family — the Russian Emperor is still called "Lit- 
tle Father" — the independence of each mem- 
ber of the family is swallowed up in the complete 
authority of the head of the national family; in 
the other the president, or constitutional king, is 
the executive servant of independent citizens, 
to whom he owes as much allegiance as they 
owe to him. 

In Saxony, to-day, more than ninety per cent, 
of the agricultural population are independent 
peasant proprietors, and the most admirable and 
successful agriculturists in the world. It is said 
indeed that the Curia Regis, which is the Latin- 



CRADLE OF INFODEKN GERMANY 13 

izcd form of Llic WiLciiagciiiole, or assembly of 
wise men, of the Norman and Angevin kings, is 
the foundation of the common hiw of England, 
and the common law of England is the law of 
more than half of the civilized world. 

Whatever the varieties and distinctions of 
government anywhere in the world, these two 
differences are the fundamental and basic dif- 
ferences, upon which all forms of government 
have been built up and developed. 

In the one, everything so far as possible is 
begun and carried on by individual initiative; 
in the other the state gradually takes control of 
all enterprise. The philosophy of the one is 
based upon the saying: love one another; the 
political philosophy of the other is based upon 
the assumption that men are not brethren, Init 
beasts and mechanical toys, who can only be 
governed by legislation and the police. The 
ideal of the one is the good Samaritan, the ideal 
of the other is the tax-collector. The one de- 
pends upon the wine and oil of sympathy and 
human brotherhood; the other claims that the 
right to an iron bed in a hospital, and the ser- 
vices of a state-paid and indiU'erent physician, 
are "refreshing fruit," as though sympathy and 
consideration, which are wlial our weaker breth- 
ren most need, could be distilled from taxes! 



14 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

It is claimed for these Teutonic tribes, that 
those of them which drifted down from the Scan- 
dinavian peninsula, are the blood and moral an- 
cestors of the particularist nations now in the 
ascendant in the world. The love of independent 
self-government, born of the geographical neces- 
sities of the situation, stamped itself upon these 
people so indelibly, that Englishmen and Ameri- 
cans bear the seal to this day. This change from 
the patriarchal to the particularist family took 
place in this German race, and took place not in 
those who came from the Baltic plain, but in 
those who came from the Saxon plain. 

The tribes from the Baltic plain, the Goths, for 
example, merely overran the Roman civilization, 
spread over it, drowned it in superior num- 
bers, and with superior valor; but it was 
the Germans from the Scandinavian peninsula 
who conquered Rome, and conquered her not 
by force alone, but by offering to the world a 
superior social and political organization. It 
was to this branch of the German race that Varus 
lost his legions, at the place where the Ems has 
its source, at the foot of the Teutoburger Wald. 
Charlemagne was of these, and his name Karl, or 
Kerl, or peasant, and the fact that his title is the 
only one in the world compounded of greatness 
and the people in equal measure, is the pith of 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 15 

what the Germans brought to leaven Lhe whole 
political world. He made the common man so 
great, that the world has consented to his unique 
and superlative baptismal title of Karl the Great, 
or Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne. 

The pivotal fact to be remembered is that these 
German tribes saved Europe by their love of 
liberty, and by their virility, from the decadence 
of an orientalized Rome. Rome, and all Rome 
meant, was not destroyed by these ancestors of 
ours; on the contrary, they saved what was best 
worth saving from the decline and fall of Rome, 
and made out of it with their own vigorous laws 
a new world, the modern western world. Great 
Britain, Germany, and the United States are 
not descended from Egypt, Greece, or Rome, 
but from "those barbarians who issued from the 
woods of Germany." 

Every school-boy should be taught that Rome 
died of a disease contracted from contact with 
the Oriental, the Syrian, the Jew, the Greek, the 
riffraff of the eastern and southern shores of the 
Mediterranean; who, by the way, make up the 
bulk of the immigration into America at this 
time. Rome was an incurable invalid long be- 
fore the Germans took control of the western 
world and saved it. 

When the Roman Emperor Augustus died, in 



16 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

14 A. D., to be succeeded by Tiberius, the Roman 
Empire was bounded on the north and east by 
the Rhine, the Danube, the Black Sea and its 
southern territory, and Syria; by all the known 
country from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean 
in northern Africa on the south; and by the 
Atlantic Ocean as far north as the river Elbe on 
the west. Five hundred years later, about 500 
A. D., the Barbarians, as they were called, had 
thrust aside the Roman Empire. The Saxons 
controlled the southern and eastern coasts of 
England; the Franks were rulers in the whole 
country from the Loire to the Elbe; south of 
them the Visigoths ruled Spain; Italy and all 
the country to the north and east of the Adri- 
atic, as far as the Danube, were in the hands of 
the Ostrogoths. The Roman Empire had been 
pushed to the eastern end of the Mediterranean, 
with its capital at Constantinople. 

In another three hundred years, or in 800 
A. D., the king of one of these German tribes re- 
vived the title of Roman Emperor, was crowned 
by the Pope, Leo III, and governed Europe as 
Charlemagne. His banner with the double- 
headed eagle, representing the two empires of 
Germany and Rome, is the standard of Germany 
to-day. Charles Martel, who led the West 
against the East, defeating the Arabs in the coun- 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 17 

try between wliat is now Tours and Poitiers, 
was Charlemagne's grandfather. What is now 
western Europe, became the home and the con- 
soHdated kingdom of the German tribes who had 
drifted down from the west of the Baltic, and 
into the Saxon plain. They had become mas- 
ters in this territory: after victories over the 
Mongolian tribes, and the Huns under Attila, 
who had conquered and plundered as far as 
Strasburg, Worms, and Treves, and were finally 
defeated near what is now Chalons; after driv- 
ing off the Arabs under Charles the Hammer 
(TS^) ; after imposing their rule upon the Roman 
Empire, the remains of w^hich cowered in Con- 
stantinople, where the Ottoman Turk took even 
that from it in 1453, which date may well be 
taken as marking the beginning of modern his- 
tory, and became themselves thereafter one of 
tlie first powers in Christian Europe; a power 
wliich is now, in lOl'^, the quarrel ground of the 
Western powers. 

These are Brobdingnagian strides through 
history, to reach the days of Dante, Petrarch, 
Boccaccio, Chaucer, Froissart, and the first 
translalion of the Bible into a vulgar tongue !)y 
Wicklilfe, to the days when Lorenzo de ^ledici 
breathed Greece iiilo Europe, and the feeling 
for bc';iul\' cliaiiuiMl from in\;ili(lisni lo coiiva- 



18 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

lescence; to the days when cannon were first 
used, printing invented, America discovered, 
and the man Luther, who gave the Germans 
their present language by his translation of the 
Bible, and who delivered us from papal tyranny, 
born; and Agincourt, and Joan of Arc, are pict- 
uresque and poignant features of the historical 
landscape. 

These rude German tribes had been welded by 
hardship and warfare, into compact and self- 
governing bodies. These loosely bound masses 
of men, women, and children, straggling down 
to find room and food, are now, in 1400 A. D., 
France, England, Austria, Germany, Scotland, 
and Spain. The same spirit and vigor that 
roamed the coasts all the way from Sweden and 
Norway to the mouth of the Thames, and to the 
Rhine, the Seine, and to the Straits of Gibraltar, 
are abroad again, landing on the shores of Amer- 
ica, circumnavigating Africa, and bringing home 
tales of Indians in the west, and Indians in the 
east. This virile stock that had been hammered 
and hewn was now to be polished; and in Italy, 
France, England, and Germany grew up a pas- 
sion for translating the rough mythology, and 
the fierce fancy of the north, into painting, build- 
ing, poetry, and music. 

France, Germany, England, Spain, Holland, 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 10 

Belgium, llaly, too, grew oul of these German 
tribes, who poured clown from the territory 
roughly included between the Rhine, the North 
Sea, the Oder, and the Danube. 

As we know these countries to-day, the defi- 
nite thing about them is their difference. You 
cross the channel in fifty minutes from Dover 
to Calais, you cross the Rhine in five minutes, 
and the peoples seem thousands of miles apart. 
"How did it happen," asks Voltaire, "that, set- 
ting out from the same point of departure, the 
governments of England and of France arrived 
at nearly the same time, at results as dissimilar 
as the constitution of Venice is unlike that of 
Morocco?" 

One might ask as well how it happened, that 
the speech of one German invasion mixing itself 
with Latin became French, of another Spanish, 
of another Portuguese, of another Italian, of 
another English. These are interesting inqui- 
ries, and in regard to the former it is not diffi- 
cult to see, that men grew to be governed differ- 
ently, according as the geographical exigencies 
of their homes were different, and as they occu- 
pied themselves differently. 

The observant traveller in the United States, 
may sec for liinist^ll' w hat differences even a few 
years of differing climate, and circumstances, 



20 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and custom will produce. The inhabitants of 
Charleston, South Carolina, are evidently and 
visibly different from those in Davenport, Iowa. 
Two towns of similar size and wealth, Salisbury, 
Maryland, and Hingham, Massachusetts, are 
almost as different, except in speech, and even 
in speech the accent is perceptibly different even 
to the careless listener, as though Salisbury were 
in the south of France, and Hingham in the north 
of Germany. These changes and differences are 
only inexplicable, to those who will not see the 
ethnographical miracles taking place under their 
noses. Look at the mongrel crowd on Fifth 
Avenue at midday, and remember what was 
there only fifty years ago, and the differentia- 
tion which has taken place in Europe due to 
climate, intermarriage, laws, and customs seems 
easy to trace and to explain. 

The fishermen and tillers of the soil in the 
Scandinavian peninsula, afterward the settlers 
in the Saxon plain and in England, recognized 
him who ruled over their settled place of abode 
as king; while roaming bands of fighting men 
would naturally attach themselves to the head 
of the tribe, as the leader in war, and recognize 
him as king. As late as the death of Char- 
lemagne, when his powerful grip relaxed, the 
tribes of Germans, for they were little more 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 21 

even then, fell apart again. Another family like 
that of Pepin arose under Robert the Strong, 
and under Ilugue Capet (987) acquired the 
title of Kings of France. The monarchy grew 
out of the weakening of feudalism, and feudalism 
had been the gradual setting, in law and custom, 
of a way of living together, of these detached 
tribes and clans, and their chiefs. 

A powerful warrior was rewarded with a horse, 
a spear; later, when territory was conquered 
and the tribe settled down, land was given as 
a reward. Land, however, does not die like a 
horse, or wear out and get broken like a spear, 
and the problem arises after the death of the 
owner, as to who is his rightful heir. Does it 
revert to the giver, the chief of the tribe, or does 
it go to the children of the owner. ^^ Some men 
are strong enough to keep their land, to add to it, 
to control those living upon it, and such a one 
becomes a feudal ruler in a small way himself. 
He becomes a duke, a dux or leader, a count, 
a margrave, a baron, and a few such powerful 
men stand by one another against the king. 
A Charlemagne, a William the Conqueror, a 
Louis XIV is strong enough to rule them and 
keep them in order for a time. Out of these 
conditions grow limited monarchies or absolute 
monarchies and national nobilities. 



22 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

More than any other one factor, the Crusades 
broke up feudaHsm. The great noble, impelled 
by a sense of religious duty, or by a love of ad- 
venture, arms himself and his followers, and 
starts on years of journey ings to the Holy Land. 
Ready money is needed above all else. Lands 
are mortgaged, and the money-lender and the 
merchant buy lands, houses, and eventually 
power, and buy them cheap. The returning 
nobles find their affairs in disarray, their fields 
cultivated by new owners, towns and cities 
grow up that are as strong or stronger than the 
castle. Before the Crusades no roturier, or mere 
tiller of the soil, could hold a fief, but the de- 
mand for money was so great that fiefs were 
bought and sold, and Philippe Auguste (1180) 
solved the problem by a law, declaring that when 
the king invested a man with a sufficient hold- 
ing of land or fief, he became ipso facto a noble. 
This is the same common-sense policy which 
led Sir Robert Peel to declare, that any man 
with an income of $50,000 a year had a right to 
a peerage. There can be no aristocracy except 
of the powerful, which lasts. The difference 
to-day is seen in the puppet nobility of Austria, 
Italy, Spain, and Germany as compared with 
the nobility of England, which is not a nobility 
of birth or of tradition, but of the powerful: 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 23 

brewers and bankers, and statesmen and law- 
yers, and leaders of publie opinion, covering their 
humble past with ermine, and crowning their 
achievements with coronets. 

The Crusades brought about as great a shift- 
ing of the balance of power, as did later the rise 
of the rich merchants, industrials, and nabobs in 
England. As the power of the nobles decreased, 
the central power or the power of the kings in- 
creased; increased indeed, and lasted, down to 
the greatest crusade of all, when democracy or- 
ganized itself, and marched to the redemption 
of the rights of man as man, without regard to 
his previous condition of servitude. 

During the thousand years between the time 
when we first hear of the German tribes, in 113 
B. C, and the year 1411, which marks the be- 
ginnings of what is now the Prussian monarchy, 
customs were becoming habits, and habits were 
becoming laws, and the political and social ori- 
gins of the life of our day were being beaten into 
shape, by the exigencies of living together of 
these tribes in the woods of Germany. 

There it was that the essence of democracy 
was distilled. Democracy, DcmoSy the crowd, the 
people, the nation, were already, in the woods of 
Germany, the court of last resort. They growh^d 
dissent, and they gave assent with the brandi>li- 



24 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing of their weapons, javelins, or ballots. They 
were called together but seldom, and between the 
meetings of the assembly, the executive work, the 
judicial work, the punishing of offenders, was left 
to a chosen few; left to those who by their con- 
trol over themselves, their control over their fam- 
ilies, their control over their neighbors, seemed 
best qualified to exercise the delegated control 
of all. 

The chief aim of their organized government, 
such as it was, seems to have been to leave them- 
selves free to go about their private business, 
with as little interference from the demands of 
public business as possible. The chief concern 
of each one was to secure his right to mind his 
own business, under certain safeguards provided 
by all. If those delegated to govern became au- 
tocratic, or evil-doers, or used their power for 
self-advancement or self-enrichment, they were 
speedily brought to book. The philosophy of 
government, then, was to make men free to go 
about their private business. That the time 
might come w^hen politics would be the ab- 
sorbing business of all, dictating the hours and 
wages of men under the earth, and reaching up 
to the institution of a recall for the angel Gabriel, 
and a referendum for the Day of Judgment, was 
undreamed of. The chiefs of the clans, the 



CRADLE OF M0DP:RN GERMANY 25 

chiefs of the tribes, the kings of tlic Germans, and 
finally the emperors were all elective. The di- 
vine right of kings is a purely modern develop- 
ment. The descendants of these German tribes 
in England, elected their king in the days of Wil- 
liam the Conqueror even, and as late as 1689 the 
Commons of England voted that King James had 
abdicated, and that the throne was vacant! 

The so-called mayors of the palace, who be- 
came kings, were in their day representatives of 
the landholders, delegates of the people, who ad- 
vised the king and aided in commanding the 
armies. These hereditary mayors of the palace 
drifted into ever greater and greater control, un- 
til they became hereditary kings. The title was 
only hereditary, however, because it was conven- 
ient that one man of experience in an office should 
be succeeded by another educated to, and fa- 
miliar with, the same experiences and duties, 
and this sj^stem of heredity continues down to 
this day in business, and in many professions, and 
so long as there is freedom to oust the incompe- 
tent, it is a good system. There can never be 
any real progress until the sons take over the 
accunuilated wisdom and experience of the 
fathers; if this is not done, then each one nuist 
begin for himself all over again. The hereditary 
principle is sound enough, so long as there is 



26 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

freedom of decapitation in cases of tyranny or 
folly. 

There has continued all through the history of 
those of the blood of the German tribes, whether 
in Germany, England, America, Norway, Swe- 
den, or Denmark, the sound doctrine that ability 
may at any time take the place of the rights of 
birth. Power, or command, or leadership by 
heredity is looked upon as a convenience, not 
as an unimpeachable right. 

Charlemagne (742-814), a descendant of a 
mayor of the palace who had become king by 
virtue of ability, swept all Europe under his sway 
by reason of his transcendent powers as a warrior 
and administrator. He did for the first time for 
Europe what Akbar did in his day for India. In 
forty -five years he headed fifty-three campaigns 
against all sorts of enemies. He fought the Sax- 
ons, the Danes, the Slavs, the Arabs, the Greeks, 
and the Bretons. What is now France, Ger- 
many, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, and 
most of Italy were under his kingship. He was 
a student, an architect, a bridge-builder, though 
he could neither read nor write, and even began a 
canal which was to connect the Danube and the 
Rhine, and thus the German Ocean, with the 
Black Sea. He is one of many monuments to 
the futility of technical education and mere 
book-learning. 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 27 

The Pope, roughly handled, because negli- 
gently protected, by the Roman emperors, turns 
to Charlemagne, and on Christmas Day (800) 
places a crown upon his head, and proclaims him 
" Csesar Augustus " and "Christianissimus Rex." 
The empire of Rome is to be born again with this 
virile German warrior at its head. Just a thou- 
sand years later, another insists that he has suc- 
ceeded to the title by right of conquest, and gives 
his baby son the title of "King of Rome," and 
just a thousand years after the death of Charle- 
magne, in 814, Napoleon retires to Elba. There 
is a witchery about Rome even to-day, and an 
emperor still sits imprisoned there, claiming for 
himself the right to rule the spiritual and intel- 
lectual world: "sedet, eternumque sedebit In- 
felix Theseus." 

Louis, called "the Pious," because the latter 
part of his life was spent in mourning his out- 
rageous betrayal, mutilation, and murder of his 
own nephew, whose rivalry he feared, succeeded 
his father, Charlemagne. He was succeeded 
again by his three sons, Lothair, Pepin, and 
Louis by his first wife, and Charles, who was his 
favorite son, by his second wife. lie had already 
divided the great heritage left him by Charle- 
magne between his three sons Lothair, Pej)in, 
and Louis; but now he wished to make another 



28 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

division into four parts, to make room for, and 
to give a kingdom to, his son Charles by his 
second wife. The three elder sons revolt against 
their father, and his last years are spent in vain 
attempts to reconcile his quarrelsome children. 
At his death war breaks out. Pepin dies, leav- 
ing, however, a son Pepin to inherit his king- 
dom of Aquitaine. Louis and Charles attempt 
to take his kingdom from him, his uncle Lo- 
thair defends him, and at the great battle of 
Fontenay (841) Louis and Charles defeat Lo- 
thair. Lothair gains the adherence of the Sax- 
ons, and Charles and Louis at the head of their 
armies confirm their alliance, and at Strasburg 
the two armies take the oath of allegiance: the 
followers of Louis took the oath in German, the 
followers of Charles in French, and this oath, 
the words of which are still preserved, is the ear- 
liest specimen of the French language in exist- 
ence. 

In 843 another treaty signed at Verdun, be- 
tween the two brothers Lothair and Louis and 
their half-brother Charles, separated for the first 
time the Netherlands, the Rhine country, Bur- 
gundy, and Italy, which became the portion of 
Lothair; all Germany east of this territory, which 
went to Louis ; and all the territory to the west of 
it, which went to Charles. Germany and France, 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 29 

therefore, by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, be- 
came distinct kingdoms, and modern geography 
in Europe is born. 

From the death of Henry the Fowler, in 930, 
down to the nomination of Frederick I of Bava- 
ria, sixth Burgrave of Nuremberg, to be Mar- 
grave of Brandenburg, in 1411, the history of 
the particuhxr Germany we are studying is 
swallowed up in the history of these German 
tribes of central Europe and of the Holy Roman 
Empire. It is in these years of the seven Cru- 
sades, from 1095 to the last in 1248; of Frederick 
Barbarossa; of the centuries-long quarrel be- 
tween theWelfs,or Guclphs,and the Waiblingers, 
or Ghibcllines, which were for years in Italy, 
and are still in Germany, political parties; of 
the Hanseatic League of the cities to protect 
commerce from the piracies of a disordered and 
unruled country; of the Dane and the Nor- 
man descents upon the coasts of France, Ger- 
many, and England, and of their burning, kill- 
ing, and carrying into captivity; of the Saracens 
scouring the Mediterranean coasts and sack- 
ing Rome itself; of the Wends and Czechs, 
Hungarian bands who dashed in upon the east- 
ovn frontiers of the now helpless and amorphous 
empire of Charlemagne, all the way from the 
Baltic to the Danube; of the quarrel between 



30 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Henry IV and that Jupiter Ecclesidsticus, Hilde- 
brand, or Gregory VII, who has left us his biog- 
raphy in the single phrase, "To go to Canossa"; 
of Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes; of the 
long fight between popes and emperors over the 
right of investiture; of Rudolph of Hapsburg ; of 
the throwing off of their allegiance to the Empire 
of the Kings of Burgundy, Poland, Hungary, and 
Denmark; of the settlement of the question of 
the legal right to elect the emperor by Charles IV, 
who fixed the power in the persons of seven rulers : 
the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the 
Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margraf of 
Brandenburg, and the three Archbishops of May- 
ence, Treves, and Cologne; of the independence 
of the great cities of northern Italy ; of Otto the 
Great, whose first wife was a granddaughter of 
Alfred the Great, and who was the real founder 
of the Holy Roman Empire, in the sense that a 
German prince rules over both Germany and 
Italy with the approval of the Pope, and in the 
sense that he, a duke of Saxony, appropriates the 
western empire (962), goes to Rome, delivers 
the Pope, subdues Italy, and fixes the imperial 
crown in the name and nation of Germany; of 
the beginning of that hope of a world-church and 
a world-state, of a universal church and a uni- 
versal kingdom, which took form in what is 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 31 

known as the Holy Roman Empire; of that 
greatest of all forgeries, the Donation of Con- 
stantine by the monk Isidor, discovered and re- 
vealed by Cardinal Nicolaus, of Cura, in which it 
is pretended that Constantine handed over Rome 
to the Pope and his successors forever, with all 
the power and privileges of the Caesars, and of 
the effects of this, the most successful lie ever 
told in the Avorld, during the seven hundred 
years it was believed : it is in these years of tur- 
bulence and change that one must trace the 
threads of history, from the first appearance of 
the Germans, down to the time when what is 
now Prussia became a frontier post of the empire 
under the rule of a Ilohenzollern. 

It is, perhaps, of all periods in history, the 
most interesting to Americans, for then and there 
our civilization was born. Writing of the con- 
quest of the British Isles by the Germans, J. R. 
Green says: "What strikes us at once in the new 
England is this, that it was the one purely Ger- 
man nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome. 
In other lands, in Spain or Gaul or Italy, though 
they were equally conquered by German peoples, 
religion, social life, administrative order, still re- 
mained Roman." The roots of our civilization, 
are to be dug for in those days when the German 
peoples met the imperialism and the Christian- 



32 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ity of Rome, and absorbed and renewed them. 
The Roman Empire, tottering on a foundation of, 
it is said, as many as fifty milHon slaves — even 
a poor man would have ten slaves, a rich man 
ten or twenty thousand — and overrun with the 
mongrel races from Syria, Greece, and Africa, 
and hiding away the remnants of its power in 
the Orient, became in a few centuries an easy 
prey to our ancestors *'of the stern blue eyes, 
the ruddy hair, the large and robust bodies." 

"Caerula quis stupult lumina? flavam 
Caesariem, et madido torquentem cornua cirro? 
Nempe quod haec illis natura est omnibus una," 

writes Juvenal of their resemblance to one an- 
other. 

By the year 1411 long strides had been made 
toward other forms of social, political, religious, 
and commercial life, due to the German grip 
upon Europe. Dante, whose grandmother was a 
Goth, was not only a poet but a fighter for free- 
dom, taking a leading part in the struggle of the 
Bianchi against the Neri and Pope Boniface, was 
born in 1265 and died in 1321; Francis of As- 
sisi, born in 1182, not only represented a demo- 
cratic influence in the church, but led the earli- 
est revolt against the despotism of money; the 
movement to found cities and to league cities to- 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 33 

gethcr for the furihcrance of trado and industry, 
and thus to giv'e rights to whole chisses of people 
hitherto browbeaten by church or state or both, 
began in Italy; and the alliance of the cities of 
the Rhine, and the Hansa League, date from the 
beginning of the thirteenth century; the dis- 
covery of how to make paper dates from this 
time, and printing followed; the revolt of the 
Albigenses against priestly dominance which 
drenched the south of France in blood began in 
the twelfth centurj'- ; slavery disappeared except 
in Spain; Wycliffe, born in 1324, translated the 
Gospels, threw off his allegiance to the papacy, 
and suffered the cheap vengeance of having his 
body exhumed and its ashes scattered in the 
river Swift; Aquinas and Duns Scotus delivered 
philosophy from the tyranny of theolog}'-; Roger 
Bacon (1214) practically- introduced the study 
of natural science; Magna Charta was signed in 
1215; Marco Polo, whose statue I have seen 
among those of the gods, in a certain Chinese 
temple, began his travels in the thirteenth cen- 
tury; the university of Bologna was founded be- 
fore l^OO for the untrammelled study of medicine 
and philosophy; Abelard, who died in 1142, rep- 
resented, to put it pithily, the spirit of free in- 
quiry in matters theoloi^n'caL and lectured to 
thousands in Paris. AN'lial do these men and 



34 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

movements mean? I am wofuUy wrong in my 
ethnographical calculations if these things do not 
mean, that the people of whom Tacitus wrote, 
*'No man dictates to the assembly; he may per- 
suade but cannot command," were shaping 
and moulding the life of Europe, with their pas- 
sionate love of individual liberty, with their 
sturdy insistence upon the right of men to think 
and work without arbitrary interference. Out 
of this furnace came constitutional government 
in England, and republican government in Amer- 
ica. We owe the origins of our political life to 
the influence of these German tribes, with their 
love of individual freedom and their stern hatred 
of meddlesome rulers, or a meddlesome state or 
legislature. 

Germany had no literature at this time. 
When Froissart was writing French history, and 
Joinville his delightful chronicles; when Chau- 
cer and Wycliffe were gayly and gravely making 
play with the monks and priests, the only names 
known in Germany were those of the mystics, 
Eckhart and Tauler. When the time came, how- 
ever, Germany was defiantly individualist in 
Luther, and Protestantism was thoroughly Ger- 
man. It was not from tales of the great, not 
from knighthood, chivalry, or their roving singer 
champions, that German literature came; but 



CRADLE OF MODl^RN GERMANY 35 

from llic Tables iind satires of the people, from 
Hans Sachs and from the Luther transhition of 
the Bible. This is roughly the setting of civili- 
zation, in which the first Ilohenzollerns found 
themselves when they took over the Mark of 
Brandenburg, in the early years of the fifteenth 
century. 

Here is a list of them, of no great interest in 
themselves, but showing the direct descent 
down to the present time; for from the Peace 
of Westphalia (1648) to the French Revolution 
the German states w^ere without either men or 
measures, except Frederick the Great, that call 
for other than dreary comment: 

Frederick I of Nuremberg 1417 

Frederick II 1440 

Albert III 1470 

Johannlll 1476 

Joachim I 1499 

Joachim II 1535 

Joliann George 1571 

Joachim Frederick 1598 

Johann Sigismund of Poland (first Duke 

of Prussia) 1608 

George William 1619 

Frederick William (the Great Elector) . 1640 
Frederick III, Frederick I of Prussia 
(crowned first King of Prussia in 

1701) 1657-1713 



36 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Frederick William I (son of Frederick I of 

Prussia) 1688-1740 

Frederick II (the Great) (son of Fred- 
erick William I) 1712-1786 

Frederick William II (son of Augustus 
William, brother of Frederick the 
Great) 1744-1787 

Frederick William III (son of Frederick 

William II) 1770-1840 

Frederick William IV (son of Frederick 
William III, 1795-1861), reigned 

1840-1861 

William I (son of Frederick William III, 
brother of Frederick William IV, 
1797-1888), reigned .... 1861-1888 

Frederick III (son of WiUiam I, 1831- 
1888), reigned from March 9 to June 
15, 1888. 

William II (son of Frederick III and Prin- 
cess Victoria of England), born Jan. 
27, 1859, succeeded Frederick III in 
1888. 

These incidents, names, and dates are mere 
whisps of history. It is only necessary to indi- 
cate that to articulate this skeleton of history, 
clothe it with flesh, and give it its appropriate 
arms and costumes would entail the putting of 
all mediaeval European history upon a screen, to 
deliver oneself without apology from any such 
task. It may be for this reason that there is no 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 37 

history of Germany in the English tongue, that 
r.anks above the elementary and the mediocre. 
Tiiere is a masterly and scholarly history of the 
Holy Roman Empire by an Englishman, which no 
student of Germany may neglect, but he who 
would trace the beginnings of Germany from 
113 B. C. down to the time of the Great Elector, 
1040, must be his own guide through the track- 
less deserts, of the formation into separate nations, 
of modern Europe. It is even with misgivings 
that the student picks his way from the time of 
the Great Elector to Bismarck, and to modern 
Germany. 

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648, marks the end 
of the Thirty Years' War, and finds Germany 
with a population reduced from sixteen millions 
to four millions. Famine which drove men and 
women to cannibalism, bands of them being 
caught cooking human bodies in a caldron for 
food; slaughter that drove men to make laws 
authorizing every man to have two wives, and 
punishing men and women who became monks 
and nuns; lawlessness that bred roving bands of 
murderers, who killed, robbed, and even ate their 
victims, demanded a ruler of no little vigor to 
lead his people back to civic, moral, and material 
health. The Great Elector wrested east Prussia 
from Poland, he defeated and drove off the Swedes, 



38 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

whom Louis XIV had drawn into an alliance 
against him, he travelled from end to end of his 
country, seeking out the problems of distress and 
remedying them by inducing immigration from 
Holland, Switzerland, and the north, by building 
roads, bridges, schools, and churches, and by en- 
couraging planting, trade, and commerce. He 
built the Frederick William Canal connecting the 
Oder and the Spree, and introduced the potato 
to his countrymen. Germany now produces in 
normal years fifteen hundred million bushels of 
potatoes. The splendid equestrian statue of the 
Great Elector on the long bridge at Berlin, is a 
worthy monument to the first great Hohenzollern. 
When Charles II of Spain died, Louis XIV, 
the Emperor Leopold I of the Holy Roman 
Empire, and the Elector of Bavaria, all three 
claimed the right to name his successor. In 
the war that followed and which lasted a dozen 
years, the Emperor, Holland, England, Portu- 
gal, the Elector of Hanover, and the Elector 
Frederick III of Brandenburg, the son of the 
Great Elector, were allied against France. 
Frederick, the Elector of Brandenburg, was 
permitted by the Emperor, in return for his 
services at this time, to assume the title of King, 
and he crowned himself and his wife Sophia 
Elizabeth, at Konigsberg, King and Queen of 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 39 

Prussia, taking the title of Frederick I of Prus- 
sia, January 18Lh, 1701. 

This 710VUS homo among sovereigns was now a 
fellow king with the rulers of England, France, 
Denmark, and Sweden, and the only crowned 
head in the empire, except the Emperor himself, 
and the Elector of Saxony, who had been chosen 
King of Poland in 1G97. By persistent syco- 
phancy he had pushed his way into the inner 
circle of the crowned. Those who have picked 
social locks these latter days by similar sycophan- 
cies, by losses at bridge in the proper quarter, 
by suffering sly familiarities to their women folk, 
and by wearing their personal and family dignity 
in sole leather, may know something of the hu- 
miliating experiences of this new monarch. He 
was a feeble fellow, but his son and successor, 
Frederick ^Yilliam I, "a shrewd but brutal boor," 
so Lord Rosebery calls him, and there could not 
be a better judge, amazed Europe by his taste 
for collecting tall soldiers, by his parsimony, his 
kennel manners in the treatment of his family 
and his subjects, and leaves a name in history 
as the first, greatest, and the unique collector 
of human beings on a Barnumesquc scale. All 
known collectors of birds, beetles, butterflies, 
and beasts accord him an easy supremacy, for 
his aggregation of colossal grenadiers. 



40 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

It is temptingly easy to be epigrammatic, per- 
haps witty, at the expense of Frederick WilHam I 
of Prussia. The man, however, who freed the 
serfs; who readjusted the taxes; who insisted 
upon industry and honesty among his officials; 
who proclaimed liberty of conscience and of 
thought; who first put on, to wear for the rest 
of his life, the uniform of his army, and thus 
made every officer proud to wear the uniform 
himself; and who left his son an army of eighty 
thousand men, thoroughly equipped and trained, 
and an overflowing treasury, may not be dis- 
missed merely with anecdotes of his eccentric 
brutality. 

Only the ignorant and the envious, nibble at 
the successes of other men, with vermin teeth 
and venomous tongue. Those people who can 
never praise anything whole-heartedly come by 
their cautious censure from an uneasy doubt of 
their own deserving. The contempt of Fred- 
erick William I for learning and learned men, 
left him leisure for matters of far more impor- 
tance to his kingdom at the time. His ha- 
bitual roughness to his son was due, perhaps, 
to the fact that there was a curious strain of 
effeminate culture in the man who deified Vol- 
taire. Poor Voltaire, who called Shakespeare 
*'le sauvage ivre, " or to quote him exactly: "On 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 41 

croirait que cet ouvrage (Ilamlet) est le fruit 
dc rimagination d'un sauvage ivre," who said 
that Dante would never be read, and that the 
comedies of Aristophanes were unworthy of pres- 
entation in a country tavern ! One is tempted to 
beheve that the father was a man of robuster 
judgment in such matters than the son, whose 
own rather mediocre hterary equipment, made 
him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of lit- 
erature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left 
a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, pro- 
vided, indeed, the sinews for the making of a 
powerful Prussian kingdom. 

March the 31st, 1740, this eccentric miser died, 
to be succeeded by his son, Frederick II, "the 
Great," then twenty-eight years old. Here w^as 
a surprise indeed. Of these German kings and 
princes in their small dominions it has been writ- 
ten: "And these magnates all aped Louis XIV 
as their model. They built huge palaces, as 
like Versailles as their means would permit, and 
generally beyond those limits, with fountains 
and avenues and dismally wide paths. Even in 
our own day a German monarch has left, fortu- 
nately unfinished, an accurate Versailles on a 
damp island in a Bavarian lake. In those gran- 
diose structures they cherished a blighting eti- 
quette, and led lives as dull as those of the aged 
and lorpid carj) in llicir own stew-ponds. Then, 



42 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

at the proper season, they would break away into 
the forest and kill game. Moreover, still in 
imitation of their model, they held, as a neces- 
sary feature in the dreary drama of their exist- 
ence, ponderous dalliances with unattractive mis- 
tresses, in whom they fondly tried to discern the 
charms of a Montespan or a La Valliere. This 
monotonous programme, sometimes varied by 
a violent contest whether they should occupy a 
seat with or without a back, or with or without 
arms, represented the even tenor of their lives." 
This good stock was evidently lying fallow, 
and humanity is neither dignified nor pleas- 
ant in the part of fertilizer. Frederick the 
Great, it should be remembered, was a Prussian 
and for Prussia only. He cared no more about 
a united Germany than we care for a united 
America to include Canada, Mexico, and the Ar- 
gentine. He cared no more for Bavarians and 
Saxons than for Swedes and Frenchmen, and, 
as we know, he was utterly contemptuous of 
German literature or the German language. He 
redeemed the shallowness and the torpidity of 
those other mediocre rulers by resisting, and 
resisting successfully, for what must have been 
to him seven very long years, the whole force 
of Austria and some of the lesser German pow- 
ers, with the armies of Russia and France back 
of them. 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 43 

He had a turbulent home Hfe; his father on 
one occasion even attempted to hang him with 
his own hands witli the cords of the window cur- 
tains, and when he fled from home he captured 
liim and proposed to put him to death as a de- 
serter, and only the intervention of the Kings 
of Poland and Sweden and the Emperor of Ger- 
many prevented it. His accomplice, however, 
w^as summarily and mercilessly^ put to death 
before his eyes. There is no illustration in all 
history, of such a successful outcome of the rod 
theory in education, as this of Frederick the 
Great. The father put into practice what ^Yes- 
ley preached: "Break their wills betimes, what- 
ever it costs; break the will if you would not 
damn the child. Let a child from a year old 
be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly." 

The meanness and cruelty, the parsimony and 
the eccentricities, of the father left the son an 
army of eighty thousand troops, troops as supe- 
rior to other troops in Europe as are the Japanese 
infantry to-day, to the Manchu guards that pick 
the weeds in the court-yards of the palace at 
Mukden; and he left him, too, a kingdom with no 
debts and an overflowing treasury. It is seldom 
that such insane vanities leave such a fair estate 
and an heir with such unicjue abilities for its 
skilful cxpluilaliou. Of Frederick's wars against 



44 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Austria, against France, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, 
and Poland; of his victories at Prague, Leuthen, 
Rossbach,and Zorndorf ; of his addition of Siberia 
and PoHsh Prussia to his kingdom; of his comical 
literary love affair with Voltaire; of his brutal 
comments upon the reigning ladies of Russia 
and France, which brought upon him their bit- 
ter hatred; of his restoration and improvement 
of his country; of his strict personal economy 
and loyalty to his own people, scores of volumes 
have been written. The hero-worshipper, Car- 
lyle, and the Jove of reviewers, Macaulay, have 
described him, and many minor scribes besides. 
It is said of his victory of Rossbach, in 1757, 
that then and there began the recreation of Ger- 
many, the revival of her political and intellectual 
life, and union under Prussia and Prussian kings. 
Frederick the Great deserves this particular en- 
comium; for as Luther freed Germany, and all 
Christendom indeed, from the tyranny of tradi- 
tion, as Lessing freed us from the tyranny of the 
letter, from the second-hand and half-baked 
Hellenism of a Racine and a Corneille, so Freder- 
ick the Great freed his countrymen at last from 
the puerile slavery to French fashions and tradi- 
tions, which had made them self-conscious at 
home and ridiculous abroad. He first made a 
Prussian proud to be a Prussian. 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 45 

This last quarter of the eighteenth century in 
Germany saw the death of Lessing in 1781, the 
pubhcation of Kant's "Kritik der Reinen Ver- 
nunft" in the same year, and the death of the 
great Frederick in 178G. These names mark the 
physical and intellectual coming of age of Ger- 
many. Lessing died misunderstood and feared 
by the card-board literary leaders of his day, 
men who still wrote and thought with the geo- 
metrical instruments handed them from France ; 
Kant attempted to push philosophical inquiry 
beyond the bounds of human experience, and 
Frederick left Prussia at last not ashamed to be 
Prussia. Napoleon was eighteen years old when 
Frederick died, and he, next to Bismarck, did 
more to bring about German unity than any 
other single force. Unsuccessful Charlemagne 
though he was, he without knowing it blazed the 
political path which led to the crowning of a 
German emperor in the palace at Versailles, less 
than a hundred years after the death of Frederick 
the Great. In 1797 at Montebello, Napoleon 
said: "If the Germanic System did not exist, 
it would be necessary to create it expressly for 
the convenience of France." 




II 



FREDERICK THE GREAT TO 
BISMARCK 

FREDERICK THE GREAT died in 1786, 
leaving Prussia the most formidable mili- 
tary power on the Continent. In finan- 
cial, law, and educational matters he had made 
his influence felt for good. He distributed work- 
horses and seed to his impoverished nobles; he 
encouraged silk, cotton, and porcelain industries ; 
he built the Finow, the Planesche, and Brom- 
berger Canals; he placed a tariff on meat, ex- 
cept pork, the habitual food of the poor, and 
spirits and tobacco and coffee were added to the 
salt monopoly; he codified the laws, which we 
shall mention later; he aided the common 
schools, and in his day were built the opera-house, 
library, and university in Berlin, and the new 
palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam. 

Almost exactly one hundred years after the 
death of Frederick the Great, there ended prac- 
tically, at the death of the Emperor William I, 
in 1888, the political career of the man, who with 

46 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 47 

his personally manufactured cement of blood 
and iron, bound Germany together into a nation. 
The middle of the seventeenth, the middle of the 
eighteenth, and the middle of the nineteenth 
centuries, with the Great Elector, Frederick the 
Great, and Bismarck as the central figures, mark 
the features of the historical landscape of Ger- 
many as with mile-stones. 

How difficult was the task to bring at last an 
emperor of all Germany to his crowning at Ver- 
sailles, January 18, 1871, and how mighty the 
artificer who accomplished the work, may be 
learned from a glance at the political, geograph- 
ical, and patriotic incoherence of the land that is 
now the German Empire. 

Germany had no definite national policy from 
the death of Frederick the Great till the reign 
of Bismarck began in 1862. Hazy discussions 
of a confederation of princes, of a Prussian em- 
pire, of lines of demarcation, of acquisitions of 
German territory, were the phantoms of a pol- 
icy, and even these were due to the pressure of 
Prussia. 

The general political torpidity is surprisingly 
displayed, when one remembers that Goethe 
ri740-183'2), who lived through the French Rev- 
olution, who was thlrly-seven years old when 
Frederick the Great died, and who lived through 



48 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the whole flaming hfe of Napoleon, was scarcely 
more stirred by the political features of the time 
than though he had lived in Seringapatam. He 
was a superlatively great man, but he was as 
parochial in his politics as he was amateurish in 
his science, as he was a mixture of the coxcomb 
and the boor, in his love affairs. Lessing, who 
died in 1781, IClopstock, who died in 1803, Schil- 
ler, who died in 1805, Kant, who died in 1804, 
Hegel, who died in 1831, Fichte, who died in 
1814, Wolf, who died in 1824, ''Jean Paul" 
Friedrich Richter, who died in 1825, Voss, who 
died in 1826, Schelling, who died in 1854, the 
two Schlegels, August Wilhelm and Frederick, 
who died in 1845 and in 1829, Jacob Grimm, 
who died in 1863, Herder, Wieland, Kotzebue, 
what a list of names! What a blossoming of 
literary activity! But no one of them, these 
the leaders of thought in Germany, at the time 
when the world was approaching the birthday 
of democracy through pain and blood, no one 
of these was especially interested in politics. 

There was theoretical writing about freedom. 
Heine mocked at his countrymen and at the 
world in general, and deified Napoleon, from his 
French mattress, on which he died, in 1856, 
only fifty -seven years old. Fichte ended a course 
of lectures on Duty, with the words: "This 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 49 

course of lectures is suspended till the end of Llie 
campaign. We shall resume if our country be- 
come free, or we shall have died to regain our 
liberty." But Fichte neither resumed nor died! 
Herder criticised his countrymen for their slavish 
following of French forms and models in their lit- 
erature, as in their art and social life. And well 
he might thus criticise, when one remembers how 
cramped was the literary vision even of such men 
as Voltaire and Heine. We have already men- 
tioned some of Voltaire's literary judgments in 
the preceding chapter, and Heine ventured to 
compare Racine to Euripides ! No wonder that 
Germany needed schooling in taste, if such were 
the opinions of her advisers. Such literary can- 
ons as these could only be accepted by minds long 
inured to provincial, literary, and social slavery. 

Just as every little princeling of those days in 
Germany took Louis XIV for his model, so every 
literary fledgling looked upon Voltaire as a god, 
and modelled his style upon the stiff and pom- 
pous verses of the French literary men of that 
time. 

Not even to-day has Germany escaped from 
this bondage. In Baden three words out of ten 
that you hear are French, and the German wher- 
ever he lives in Germany still invites you to 
MiUagcsscn at eight p. m. because he has no 
word in liis own language for diner, and must 



50 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

still say anstdndiger or gebildeter Mensch for 
gentleman. To make the German even a Ger- 
man in speech and ideals and in independence 
has been a colossal task. One wonders, as one 
pokes about in odd corners of Germany even 
now, whether Herder's caustic contempt, and 
Bismarck's cavalry boots, have made every Ger- 
man proud to be a German, as now he surely 
ought to be. The tribal feeling still exists there. 

Fichte's lectures on Nationality were sup- 
pressed and Fichte himself looked upon askance. 
The Schlegels spent a lifetime in giving Germany 
a translation of Shakespeare. Hegel wrote the 
last words of his philosophy to the sound of the 
guns at the battle of Jena. Goethe writes a 
paragraph about his meeting with Napoleon. 
Metternich, born three years before the Amer- 
ican Revolution, and who died a year before the 
battle of Bull Run, declared: *'The cause of all 
the trouble is the attempt of a small faction to 
introduce the sovereignty of the people under 
the guise of a representative system." 

If this was the attitude of the intellectual 
nobility of the time, what are we to suppose that 
Messrs. MuUer and Schultze and Fischer and 
Kruger, the small shop-keepers and others of 
their ilk, and their friends thought.^ Even forty 
years later Friedrich Hebbel, in 1844, paid a 
visit to the Industrial Exposition in Paris. He 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 51 

writes in his diary: "Alle dicse Dingc sind mir 
iiicliL idlciii glcichgultig; sic sind mir wider- 
wiirtig." Germany had not awakened even 
then to any wide popular interest in the world 
that was doing things. As Voltaire phrased 
it, France ruled the land, England the sea, 
and Germany the clouds, even as late as the 
middle of the nineteenth century. This is the 
more worth noting, as giving a peg upon which 
to hang Germany's astounding progress since 
that time. Even as late as Bismarck's day he 
complained of the German: *'It is as a Prus- 
sian, a Hanoverian, a Wiirtembergcr, a Bava- 
rian, or a Hessian, rather than as a German, 
that he is disposed to give unequivocal proof of 
patriotism." The present ambitious German 
Emperor said, in 1899, at Hamburg: "The slug- 
gishness shown by the German people in inter- 
esting themselves in the great questions moving 
the world, and in arriving at a political under- 
standing of those questions, has caused me deep 
anxiety. " What kind of material had the nation- 
makers to work with ! What a long, disappoint- 
ing task it must have been to light these people 
into a blaze of patriotism! In those days Amer- 
ica, though the population of the American colo- 
nies was only eleven hundred and sixty thousand 
in 1750, talked, wrote, and fought politics. The 
outstanding personalities of the time were palri- 



52 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ots, soldiers, politicians, not a dreamer among 
them. 

England was so nonchalantly free already, 
that the betting-book at White's Club records 
that, "Lord Glengall bets Lord Yarmouth one 
hundred guineas to five that Buonaparte returns 
to Paris before Beau Brummel returns to Lon- 
don ! " Burke and Pitt, and Fox and North, and 
Canning might look after politics; Hargreaves 
and Crompton would take care to keep English 
industries to the fore, and Watt, and the great 
canal-builder Brindley, would solve the problem 
of distributing coal; their lordships cracked 
their plovers' eggs, unable to pronounce even the 
name of a single German town or philosopher, 
and showed their impartial interest, much as 
now they do, in contemporary history, by back- 
ing their opinions with guineas, with the odds 
on Csesar against the "Beau." 

Weimar was a sunny little corner where 
poetry and philosophy and literature were 
hatched, well out/ of reach of the political storms 
of the time. The Grand Duke of Sachsen- 
Weimar-Eisenach with his tiny court, his Fal- 
staffian army, his mint and his customs-houses, 
with his well-conducted theatre and his suite of 
litterateurs, was one of three hundred rulers in 
the Germany of that time. 

The Holy Roman Empire, consisting, in Na- 



fri:dj:rick to bismarck 53 

poleon's time, of Austria, Prussia, and a mass of 
minor states, these last grouped together under 
the name of the Confederation of the Rhine, and 
wholly under French influence, lasted one thou- 
sand eight hundred and fifty-eight years, or from 
Caesar's victory of Pharsalia down to August the 
1st, 1806, when Napoleon announced to the Diet 
thai he no longer recognized it. 

This institution had no political power, was 
merely a theoretical political ring for the theoret- 
ical political conflicts of German agitators and 
dreamers, and was composed of the representa- 
tives of this tangle of powerless, but vain and self- 
conscious little states. This Holy Roman Em- 
pire, with an Austrian at its head, and aided by 
France, strove to prevent the development of a 
strong German state under the leadership of Prus- 
sia. After Napoleon's day it became a struggle 
between Prussia and Austria. Austria had only 
eiglit out of thirty-six million German population, 
while Prussia was practically entirely German, and 
Prussia used her army, politics, and commerce to 
gain control in Germany. Even to-day Austria- 
Hungary contains the most varied conglomeration 
of races of any nation in tlie world. Austria has 
20,000,000 inhal)ilants, of whom 9,000,000 are 
Germans, 1,000,000 Italians and Rumanians, 
(1,000,000 Bohemians and Slovacs, 8,000,000 
Poles and RuUuMiians, ^2,000,000 Slovenes and 



54 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Croatians. Of the 19,000,000 of Hungary there 
are 9,000,000 Magyars, 2,000,000 Germans, 
2,500,000 Slovacs and Ruthenians, 3,000,000 Ru- 
manians, and nearly 3,000,000 Southern Slavs. 

Weimar was one of the three hundred capitals 
of this limp empire, with tariffs, stamps, coins, 
uniforms, customs, gossip, interests, and a sov- 
ereign of its own. When Bismarck undertook 
the unifying of the customs tariffs of Germany, 
there were even then fifteen hundred different 
tariffs in existence! 

Weimar had its salon, its notables: Goethe, 
Schiller, Wieland, Frau von Stein, Dr. Zimmer- 
mann as a valued correspondent; its Grand Duke 
Karl August and his consort; Herder, who jeal- 
ous of the renown of Goethe, and piqued at the 
insufficient consideration he received, soon de- 
parted, to return only when the Grand Duchess 
took him under her wing and thus satisfied his 
morbid pride; its love affair, for did not the 
beautiful Frau von Werthern leave her husband, 
carry out a mock funeral, and, heralded as dead, 
elope to Africa with Herr von Einsiedel.'^ But 
Weimar was as far away from what we now 
agree to look upon as the great events of the 
day, as were Lords Glengall and Yarmouth at 
White's, in Saint James's. 

It requires imagination to put Goethe and 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 55 

Schiller and Wicland in the bow window at 
White's, and to place Lords Glcngall and Yar- 
mouth in Frau von Stein's drawing-room in 
Weimar; but the discerning eye which can see 
this picture, knows at a glance why England mis- 
understands Germany and Germany misunder- 
stands England. For White's is White's and 
Weimar is Weimar, and one is British and one 
is German as much now as then ! In the one the 
winner of the Derby is of more importance than 
any philosopher ; in the other, philosophers, poets, 
professors, and playwrights are almost as well 
known, as the pedigrees of the yearlings to be 
sold at Newmarket, are known at White's. 
They still have plover's eggs early in the season 
at White's, and they still recognize the subtle 
distinction there between "port wine" and 
"port"; while in Weimar nobody, unless it be 
the duke, even boils his sauerkraut in white 



wmc 



One could easily write a chapter on Weimar 
and its self-satisfied social and literary activi- 
ties. There were three hundred or more capitals 
of like complexion and isolation: some larger, 
some smaller, none perhaps with such a splendid 
literary setting, but all indifferent with the in- 
diflVrence of distant relatives who seldom see one 
another, when the French Revolution exploded 



56 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

its bomb at the gates of the world's habits of 
thought. 

No intelHgent man ever objected to the French 
Revolution because it stood for human rights, 
but because it led straight to human wrongs. 
The dream was angelic, but the nightmare in 
which it ended was devilish. The French Rev- 
olution was the most colossal disappointment 
that humanity has ever had to bear. 

More than the demagogue gives us credit for, 
are the great majority of us eager to help our 
neighbors. The trouble is that the demagogue 
thinks this, the most difficult of all things, an 
easy task. God and Nature are harsh when 
they are training men, and we, alas, are soft, 
hence most of our failures. Correction must 
be given with a rod, not with a sop. There lies 
all the trouble. 

The political and philanthropic wise men were 
setting out for the manger and the babe, their 
eyes on the star, laden with gifts, when they 
were met by a whiff of grape-shot from the guns 
commanded by a young Corsican genius. The 
French Revolution found us all sympathetic, 
but making men of equal height by lopping off 
their heads ; making them free by giving no one 
a chance to be free; making them fraternal by 
insisting that all should be addressed by the same 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 57 

title of, "citizen/' was soon seen to be the method 
of a pohlical nursery. 

It was no fault of the French Revolution that 
it was no revolution at all, in any political sense. 
Men maddened by oppression hit, kick, bite, and 
burn. They are satisfied to shake the burden of 
the moment off their backs, even though the bur- 
den they take on be of much the same character. 
"It is perfectly possible, to revive even in our 
own day the fiscal tyranny which once left even 
European populations in doubt whether it was 
worth while preserving life by thrift and toil. 
You have only to tempt a portion of the popula- 
tion into temporary idleness, by promising them 
a share in a fictitious hoard lying in an imaginary 
strong-box which is supposed to contain all hu- 
man wealth. You have only to take the heart out 
of those who would willingly labor and save, by 
taxing them ad miscricordiam for the most laud- 
able philanthropic objects. For it makes not 
the smallest difference to the motives of the 
thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether 
their fiscal oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a 
feudal baron, or a democratic legislature, and 
whcLlier they are taxed for the benefit of a cor- 
poration called Society or for the advantage of 
an individual styled King or Lord," writes Sir 
Henry Maine. In short it matters not in the 



58 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

least what you baptize oppression, so long as it 
is oppression, or whether you call your tyrant 
"Jim" or "My Lord," so long as he is a tyrant. 
Many people are slowly awakening to the fact 
in England and in America, that plain citizen 
"Jim" can be a most merciless tyrant in spite 
of his unpretentious name and title. No royal 
tyrant ever dared to attempt to gain his ends 
by dynamiting innocent people, as did the trades- 
unionists at Los Angeles, or to starve a whole 
population as did the trades-unionists in Lon- 
don. We have not escaped tyranny by chang- 
ing its name. The idea of the Contrat Social 
and of all its dilutions since, has been that indi- 
viduals go to make up society, and that society 
under the name of the state must take charge 
of those individuals. The French Revolution 
was a failure because it fell back upon that tire- 
some and futile philosophy of government which 
had been that of Louis XIV. Louis XIV took 
care of the individual units of the state by ex- 
ploiting them. He was a sound enough Socialist 
in theory. France gained nothing of much value 
along the lines of political philosophy. 

Whether it is Louis XIV who says "I'etat c'est 
moi" or the citizens banded together in a state, 
who claim that the functions of the state are to 
meddle with the business of every man, matters 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 59 

little. It is the same socialistic philosophy at 
bottom, and it has produced to-day a France of 
thirty-eight millions of people pledged to steril- 
ity, one million of whom are state officials super- 
intending the affairs of the others at a cost, in 
salaries alone, of upward of five hundred million 
dollars a year. 

In no political or philosophical sense was the 
French Revolution a revolution at all. It was 
a change of administration and leaders, but not 
a change of political theory. The French Revo- 
lution put the state in impartial supremacy over 
all classes by destroying exemptions claimed by 
the nobility and the clergy, and thus extended 
the power of the state. The English Revolution 
without bloodshed reduced the power of the 
state, not for the advantage of any class, but 
for individual liberty and local self-government. 
We Americans are the political heirs of the latter, 
not of the former, revolution. 

Germany was stirred slightly to hope for free- 
dom, but stirred mightily to protest against 
anarchy later. These were the two influences 
from the French Revolution that affected Ger- 
many, and they were so contradictory that Ger- 
many herself was for nearly a hundred years in 
a mixed mood. One influence enlivened the 
theoretical democrat, and the other sent tho ar- 



60 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

mies of all Europe post-haste to save what was 
left of orderly government in France. 

But Prussia was not what she had been under 
Frederick the Great. Frederick was more Louis 
XIV than Louis XIV himself. The economic 
and political errors of the French Revolution 
found their best practical exponent in Frederick 
the Great. In the introduction to his code of 
laws we have already mentioned are the words: 
"The head «f the state, to whom is intrusted the 
duty of securing public welfare, which is the 
whole aim of society, is authorized to direct and 
control all the actions of individuals toward this 
end." Further on the same code reads: "It is 
incumbent upon the state to see to the feeding, 
employment, and payment of all those who can- 
not support themselves, and who have no claim 
to the help of the lord of the manor, or to the help 
of the commune: it is necessary to provide such 
persons with work which is suitable to their 
strength and their capacity." 

When Frederick died he left Prussia in the grip 
of this enervating pontifical socialism, which al- 
ways everywhere ends by palsying the individ- 
ual, and through the individual the state, with 
the blight of demagogical and theoretical legisla- 
tion. The fine army grew pallid and without 
spirit, the citizens lost their individual pride, the 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK Gl 

nation as a whole lost its vigor, and when Napo- 
leon marched into Berlin, he remarked tliat the 
country hardly seemed worth conquering. 

The century from the death of Frederick the 
Great, in 1786, to the death of William the First, 
in 1888, includes, in a convenient period to re- 
member: the downfall of Frederick's patriotic 
edifice; the apathy and impotency that followed 
upon the breaking up of the bureaucracy he had 
welded into efficiency; the shuffling of the Ger- 
man states by Napoleon as though they were 
the pack of cards in a great political game ; a re- 
vival of patriotism in Prussia after floggings and 
insults that were past bearing; the jealousies 
and enmities of the various states, the betrayal 
of one by the other, and finally the struggle 
between Austria and Prussia to decide upon a 
leader for all Germany; and at last the war 
against France, 1870-71, which was to make it 
clear to the world that Germany had been Prus- 
sianized into an empire. ^ 

Frederick William II, the nephew of Frederick 
the Great, who succeeded him, was King of 
Prussia from 178G to 1797. Frederick William 
III, his son, and the husband of the beautiful 
and patriotic Queen Louisa, was King of Prus- 
sia from 1797 to 1840. Frederick William IV, 
a loquacious, indiscreet, loose-lipped sovereign. 



62 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of moist intellect and mythical delusions, was 
King of Prussia from 1840 to 1857, when his 
mental condition made his retirement necessary, 
and he was succeeded by his brother, Frederick 
William Ludwig, first as regent, then as king in 
1861, known to us as that admirable King and 
Emperor, William I, who died in 1888. 

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of 
these sovereigns, to those of us who look upon 
Germany to-day as autocratically governed in 
fact and by tradition, is their willing surrender to 
the people, on every occasion when the demand 
has been, even as little insistent as the German 
demand has been. In the case of Frederick Wil- 
liam IV, his claim, at least in words, upon his 
divine rights as a sovereign was the mark of a 
wavering confidence in himself. He was not sat- 
isfied with a rational sanction for his authority, 
but was forever assuring his subjects that God 
had pronounced for him; much as men of low 
/ intelligence attempt to add vigor to their state- 
ments by an oath. "I hold my crown," he said, 
*'by the favor of God, and I am responsible to 
Him for every hour of my government. " Much 
under the influence of the two scholars Niebuhr 
and Ranke, he hated the ideas of the French 
' \ Revolution, and dreamed of an ideal Christian 
state like that of the Middle Ages. He was cari- 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 63 

catiircd by the journals of the day, and laughed 
at by the wits, including Heine, and pictured as 
a king with "Order" on one hand, "Counter- 
order" on the other, and "Disorder" on his fore- 
head. 

Though Frederick William II marched into 
France in 1792, to support the French monarchy, 
neither his army nor his people were prepared or 
fit for this enterprise, and he soon retired. In 
1793, Prussia joined Russia in a second partition 
of Poland, but in 1795, angry with what was 
considered the double dealing of Austria and 
Russia, Prussia concluded a peace with France, 
the treaty of Basle was signed in 1795, and for 
ten years Prussia practically took no part in the 
Napoleonic wars. 

Napoleon took over the lands on the left bank 
of the Rhine, took away the freedom of forty- 
eight towns, leaving only Hamburg, Bremen, 
Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and in 
1803 he took Hanover. Later, in 1805, Bavaria, 
Wiirtemberg, and Baden aided Napoleon to 
fight the alhance against him of Austria, Eng- 
land, Russia, and Sweden. In that same year the 
Electors of Wiirtemberg and Bavaria were made 
kings by Napoleon. In 1806 Bavaria, Baden, 
Wiirtemberg, and Ilessen seceded from the Ger- 
man Empire, formed themselves into the Con- 



64 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

federation of the Rhine, and acknowledged Na- 
poleon as their protector. In 1806 Francis II, 
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, resigned, 
and there was neither an empire nor an emperor 
of Germany, nor was there a Germany of united 
interests. 

In 1806 Frederick William III, driven by the 
grossest insults to his country and to his wife, 
finally declared war against France; there fol- 
lowed the battle of Jena, in which the Germans 
were routed, and in that same year Napoleon 
marched into Berlin unopposed. In 1807 the 
Russian Emperor was persuaded to make peace, 
and Prussia without her ally was helpless. The 
Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, deprived Prussia 
of the whole of the territory between the Elbe 
and the Rhine, and this with Brunswick, Hes- 
sen-Cassel, and part of Hanover was dubbed 
the Kingdom of Westphalia, and Napoleon's 
youngest brother Jerome was made king. The 
Polish territory of Prussia was given to the 
Elector of Saxony, who was also rewarded for 
having deserted Prussia after the battle of Jena 
by being made a king. Prussia was further 
required to reduce her army to forty-two thou- 
sand men. 

It is neither a pretty nor an inspiriting story, 
this of the mangling of Germany by Napoleon; 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK G5 

of the German princes bribed l)y kingly crowns 
from the hands of an ancestorless Corsican; but 
it all goes to show how far from any sense of 
common aims and duties, how far frjm the 
united Vaterland of to-day, was the Germany of 
a hundred years ago. It adds, too, immeasur- 
ably to the laurels of the man who produced the 
present German Empire out of his own pocket, 
and stood as chief sponsor at its christening at 
Versailles in 1871. 

This Prussia that sent twenty thousand troops 
to aid Napoleon against Russia, and which dur- 
ing the retreat from Moscow went over bodily 
to the enemy; this Prussia whose vacillating 
king simpered with delight at a kind word from 
Napoleon, and shivered with dismay at a harsh 
one; this army with its officers as haughty as 
they w^ere incapable, and its men only prevented 
from wholesale desertion by severe punishment, 
an army rotten at the core, with a coat of varnish 
over its worm-eaten fabric; this Prussia humil- 
iated and disgraced after the battle of Jena, in 
1806, in seven years' time came into its own 
again. Vom Stein, Scharnhorst, the son of a 
Hanoverian peasant, and Ilardenbcrg put new 
life into the state. At Waterloo the pummelled 
squares of red-coats were relieved by these Prus- 
sians, and BlQcher, or "Old Marschall \'()r\\arls" 



/ 



66 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

as he was called, redeemed his countrymen's 
years of effeminate lassitude and vacillation. 

"Such was Vorwarts, such a fighter. 
Such a lunging, plunging smiter. 
Always stanch and always straight. 
Strong as death for love or hate, 
Always first in foulest weather, 
Neck or nothing, hell for leather. 
Through or over, sink or swim, 
Such was Vorwarts — here's to him!" 

Napoleon goes to Saint Helena and dies in 1821. 
What he did for Germany was to prove to her 
how impossible was a cluster of jealous, malicious 
provincial little state governments in the heart 
of Europe, protecting themselves from falling 
apart by the ancient legislative scaffolding of the 
Holy Roman Empire. He squeezed three hun- 
dred states into thirty-eight, and the very year 
of Waterloo, on April the 1st, a German Napo- 
leon was born who was to further squeeze these 
states into what is known to-day as the German 
Empire. 

The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of the 
European powers to redistribute the possessions, 
that Napoleon had scattered as bribes and re- 
wards among his friends, relatives, and enemies, 
so far as possible, among their rightful owners. 

From the island of Elba, off the coast of 
Tuscany, Napoleon looked on while the alUes 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 67 

quarrelled at this Congress of Vienna. Prussia 
claimed the riglit to annex Saxony; Russia de- 
manded Poland, and against them were leagued 
England, Austria, and France, France repre- 
sented by the Mephistophelian Talleyrand, who 
strove merely to stir the discord into another 
war. In the midst of their deliberations word 
came that the wolf was in the fold again. Na- 
poleon was riding to Paris, through hysterical 
crowds of French men and women, eager for 
another throw against the world, if their Little 
Corporal were there to shake the dice for them. 
He had another throw and lost. The French 
Revolution in 1789, followed by the insurrection 
of all Europe against that strange gypsy child 
of the Revolution, Napoleon, from 1807-1815, 
ended at last at Waterloo. This lover, who w^on 
whole nations as other men win a maid or two; 
this ruler, who had popes for handmaidens and 
gave kingdoms as tips, who dictated to kings 
preferably from the palaces of their own capi- 
tals; this fortunate demon of a man, who had 
escaped even Mile. Montausier, was safely dis- 
posed of at Saint Helena, and the ordinary ways 
of mortals had their place in the world again. 

The Congress of Vienna reassembled, and the 
readjustment of the map of Europe began over 
again. Prussia is given back what had been 



68 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

taken away from her. A German confederation 
was formed in 1815 to resist encroachments, but 
with no definite pohtical idea, and its diet, to 
which Prussia, Austria, and the other smaller 
states sent representatives, became the laughing- 
stock of Europe. Jealous bickerings and insist- 
ence upon silly formalities paralyzed legisla- 
tion. Lawyers and others who presented their 
claims before this assembly from 1806-1816 were 
paid in 1843! The liquidation of the debts of 
the Thirty Years' War was made after two 
hundred years, in 1850! The laws for the mil- 
itary forces were finally agreed upon in 1821, 
and put in force in 1840! 

There were three principal forms of govern- 
ment among these states : first. Absolutist, where 
the ruler and his officials governed without ref- 
erence to the people, as in Prussia and Austria; 
second, those who organized assemblies (Lands- 
lande), where no promises were made to the 
people, but where the nobles and notables were 
called together for consultation ; and third, a sort 
of constitutional monarchy with a written con- 
stitution and elected representatives, but with 
the ruler none the less supreme. One of the first 
rulers to grant such a constitution to his people 
was the Grand Duke who presided over the 
little court at Weimar. 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 69 

The mass of the people were wholly indiffer- 
ent. The intellectuals were divided among them- 
selves. The schools and universities after 1818 
form associations and societies, the Burschen- 
schaft, for example, and in a hazy professorial 
fashion talk and shout of freedom. They were 
of those passionate lovers of liberty, more intent 
on the dower than on the bride; willing to talk 
and sing and to tell the world of their own de- 
serts, but with little iron in their blood. / 

When a real man wants to be free he fights, he 
does not talk; he takes what he wants and asks 
for it afterward; he spends himself first and 
affords it afterward. These dreamy gentlemen 
could never make the connection between their 
assertions and their actions. They were as in- 
consistent, as a man who sees nothing unreason- 
able in circulating ascetic opinions and a peram- 
bulator at the same time. They were dreary 
and technical advocates of liberty. 

At a great festival at the Wartburg, in 1817, 
the students got out of hand, burned the works 
of those conservatives, Haller and Kotzebue, and 
the Code Napoleon. This youthful folly was 
purposely exaggerated throughout Germany, 
and was used by tlie party of autocracy to 
frighten the people, and also as a reason for pass- 
ing even severer laws against the ebullitions of 



70 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

liberty. At a conference at Carlsbad in 1819 
the representatives of the states there assembled 
passed severe laws against the student societies, 
the press, the universities, and the liberal pro- 
fessors. 

From 1815-1830 the opinions of the more en- 
lightened changed. The fear of Napoleon was 
gradually forgotten, and the hatred of the abso- 
lutism of Prussia and Austria grew. 

In 1830 constitutions were demanded and 
were guardedly granted in Brunswick, Saxony, 
Hanover, and Hesse-Cassel. In 1832 things had 
gone so far that at a great student festival the 
black, red, and gold flag of the Burschenschaft 
was hoisted, toasts were drunk to the sover- 
eignty of the people, to the United States of 
Germany, and to Europe Republican ! This was 
followed by further prosecutions. Prussia con- 
demned thirty -nine students to death, but con- 
fined them in a fortress. The prison-cell of the 
famous Fritz Renter may be seen in Berlin to- 
day. In Hesse, the chief of the liberal party, 
Jordan, was condemned to six years in prison; 
in Bavaria a journalist was imprisoned for four 
years, and other like punishments followed else- 
where. It was in 1857, when Queen Victoria 
came to the throne, that Hanover was cut off 
from the succession, as Hanover could not de- 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 71 

sccnd to a woman. Tlic Duke of Cumberland 
became the ruler of Hanover, and England 
ceased to hold any territory in Europe. 

From 1839-1847 there was comparative quiet 
in the political world. The rulers of the various 
states succeeded in keeping the liberal profes- 
sorial rhetoric too damp to be valuable as an 
explosive. 

Interwoven with this party in Germany, de- 
manding for the people something more of rep- 
resentation in the government, was a movement 
for the binding together of the various states in 
a closer union. In 1842 when the first stone was 
laid for the completion of the Cologne Cathe- 
dral, at a banquet of the German princes pre- 
sided over by the King of Prussia, the King of 
Wurtemberg proposed a toast to "Our common 
country!" That toast probably marks the first 
tangible proof of the existence of any important 
feeling upon the subject of German unity. 

At a congress of Germanists at Frankfort, in 
184G, professors and students, jurists and his- 
torians, talked and discussed the questions of a 
German parliament and of national unity more 
perhaps than matters of scholarship. 

In 1847 Professor Gervinus founded at Heidel- 
berg the Deutsche Zcitung, which was to be lib- 
eral, national, and for all Germany. 



72 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

I should bo sorry to give the impression that I 
have not given proper vahie to the work of the 
German professor and student in bringing about 
a more Hberal constitution for the states of Ger- 
many. Liebig of Munich, Ranke of Berhn, 
Sybel of Bonn, Ewaki of Gottingen, Mommsen 
in Berhn, Dolhnger in IMunich, and such men as 
Schiemann in Berhn to-day, were and are, not 
only scholars, but they have been and are politi- 
cal teachers; some of them violently reaction- 
ary, if you please, but all of them stirring men 
to think. 

No such feeling existed then, or exists now, 
in Germany, as animated Oxford some fifty 
years ago when the greatest Sanscrit scholar 
then living was rejected by a vote of that body, 
one voter declaring: "I have always voted 
against damned intellect, and I trust I always 
may!" A state of mind that has not altogether 
disappeared in England even now. Indeed I 
am not sure, that the most notable feature of 
political life in England to-day, is not a growing 
revolt against legislation by tired lawyers, and 
an increasing demand for common-sense govern- 
ing again, even if the governing be done by 
those with small respect for "damned intellect." 

The third French revolution of IS-iS set fire 
to all this, not only in Germany but in Austria, 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 73 

Hungary, Roumania, and elsewhere. Wc must 
go rapidly tlirougli liiis period of seething and of 
pohtieal teething. The parhament at Frankfort 
with nothing but moral authority discussed and 
declaimed, and finally elected Archduke John 
of Austria as "administrator" of the empire. 
There followed discussions as to whether Aus- 
tria should even become a member of the new 
confederation. Two parties, the "Little Ger- 
manists" and the "Pan Germanists," those in 
favor of including, and those opposed to the in- 
clusion of Austria, fought one another, with 
Prussia leading the one and Austria, with the 
prestige of having been head of the former Holy 
Roman Empire, the other. 

In 1849 Austria withdrew altogether and the 
King of Prussia was elected Emperor of Ger- 
many, but refused the honor on the ground that 
he could not accept the title from the people, but 
only from his equals. There followed riots and 
uprisings of the people in Prussia, Saxony, Baden, 
and elsewhere throughout Germany. The Prus- 
sian guards were sent to Dresden to (juell the 
rioting there and took the city after two days' 
fighting. The parliament itself was dispersed 
and moved to Sluttgart, but there again they 
were dispersed, and tlie end was a flight of the 
liberals to Switzerland, France, and the United 



74 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

States. We in America profited by the coming 
of such valuable citizens as Carl Schurz and 
many others. There were driven from Ger- 
many, they and their descendants, many among 
our most valuable citizens. The descendant of 
one of the worthiest of them. Admiral Osterhaus, 
is one of the most respected officers in our navy, 
and will one day command it, and we could not 
be in safer hands. In 1849 the German Federal 
fleet was sold at auction as useless; Austria was 
again in the ascendant and German subjects in 
Schleswig were handed over to the Danes. 

In 1850 both the King of Prussia and the Em- 
peror of Austria called congresses, but Prussia 
finally gave up hers, and the ancient confedera- 
tion as of before 1848 met as a diet at Frankfort 
and from 1851-1858 Bismarck was the Prussian 
delegate and Austria presided over the delib- 
erations. 

A factor that made for unity among the 
German states was the Zollverein. From 1818- 
1853 under the leadership of Prussia the various 
states were persuaded to join in equalizing their 
tariffs. Between 1834-5 Prussia, Bavaria, Wlir- 
temberg. Saxony, Baden, Hesse-Nassau, Thur- 
ingia, and Frankfort agreed upon a common 
standard for customs duties, and a few years 
later they were joined by Brunswick, Hanover, 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 75 

and the Mecklenburgs. German industry and 
commerce had their ])eginnings in these agree- 
ments. The liundreds of different customs duties 
became so exasperating that even jealous little 
governments agreed to conform to simpler laws, 
and probably this commercial necessity did more 
to bring about the unity of Germany than the 
King, or politics, or the army. 

With the struggles of the various states to ob- 
tain constitutions we cannot deal, nor would it 
add to the understanding of the present polit- 
ical condition of the German Empire. 

Prussia, after riots in Berlin, after promises and 
delays from the vacillating King, who one day 
orders his own troops out of the capital and his 
brother, later William I, to England to appease 
the anger of the mob, and parades the streets 
with the colors of the citizens in revolt wrapped 
about him; and the next day, surly, obstinate, 
but ever orating, holds back from his pledges, 
finally accepts a constitution which is probably 
as little democratic as any in the world. 

Of the sixty-five million inhabitants of the 
German Empire, Prussia has over forty millions. 
The Landtag of Prussia is composed of two 
chambers, the first called the Ilerrenhaus, or 
House of Lords, and the second the Abgeord- 
netenhaus, or Chamber of Deputies. This up- 



76 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

per house is made up of the princes of the 
royal family who are of age; the descendants of 
the formerly sovereign families of Hohenzollern- 
Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ; chiefs 
of the princely houses recognized by the Con- 
gress of Vienna; heads of the territorial nobility 
formed by the King; representatives of the uni- 
versities; burgomasters of towns with more 
than fifty thousand inhabitants, and an un- 
limited number of persons nominated by the 
King for life or for a limited period. This upper 
chamber is a mere drawing-room of the sover- 
eign's courtiers, though there may be, and as a 
matter of fact there are at the present time, rep- 
resentatives even of labor in this chamber, but 
in a minority so complete that their actual influ- 
ence upon legislation, except in a feeble advisory 
capacity, amounts to nothing. In this Herren- 
haus, or upper chamber, of Prussia there are at 
this writing among the 327 members 3 bankers, 
8 representatives of the industrial and merchant 
class, and 1 mechanic; 12 in all, or not even four 
per cent., to represent the industrial, financial, 
commercial, and working classes. Even in the 
lower chamber, or Abgeordnetenhaus, there are 
only 10 merchants, 19 manufacturers, 7 labor 
representatives, and 1 bank director, or 37 
members who represent the commercial, manu- 



fri:derick to bismarck 77 

facturing, and industrial interests in a total 
membership of 443. 

In the other states of Germany mueh the 
same conditions exist. In Bavaria, in the upper 
house, or Kanwier der Reichsrdte, there is no 
representative, and in the lower house of 103 
members only 29 representatives of the indus- 
trial world. 

In Saxony, the most socialistic state in Ger- 
many, the upper chamber with 49 members has 
5 industrials; the lower chamber with 82 mem- 
bers has 40 representatives of commercial, indus- 
trial, and financial affairs. 

In Wlirtemberg, in the upper chamber with 
51 members there are 3 industrials; and in the 
second chamber with 63 members there are 17 
industrials. 

In Baden, of the 37 members of the upper 
house there are 6 industrials; of the 73 mem- 
bers of the lower house there are 23 representa- 
tives of commerce and industry. 

This condition of political inequality is the 
result of the maintenance of the old political 
divisions, despite the fact that in the last thirty 
years the whole complexion of the country has 
changed radically, due to the rapid increase of 
the clly populations representing the industrial 
and commercial progress of a nation that is now 



78 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the rival of both the United States and Great 
Britain. In more than one instance a town with 
over 300,000 inhabitants will be represented in 
the legislature in the same proportion as a coun- 
try population of 30,000. Stettin, for example, 
with a population of 245,000, which is a seventh 
of the total population of Pomerania, has only 
6 of the 89 provincial representatives. Further, 
the three-class system of voting in Prussia and 
in the German cities, is a unique arrangement 
for giving men the suffrage without either power 
or privilege. According to this system every 
male inhabitant of Prussia aged twenty-five is 
entitled to vote in the election of members of 
the lower house. The voters, however, are di- 
vided into three classes. This division is made 
by taking the total amount of the state taxes 
paid in each electoral district and dividing it 
into three equal amounts. The first third is 
paid by the highest tax-payers ; the second third 
by the next highest tax-payers, and the last 
third by the rest. The first class consists of a 
comparatively few wealthy people; it may even 
happen that a single individual pays a third of 
the taxes in a given district. These three classes 
then elect the members of an electoral college, 
who then elect the member of the house. In 
Prussia it may be said roughly that 260,000 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 79 

wealthy tax-payers elect one-third; 870,000 tax- 
payers elect one-third, and the other 0,500,000 
voters elect one-third of the members of the 
electoral college, with the consequence that the 
6,500,000 are not represented at all in the lower 
house of Prussia. In order to make this three- 
class system of voting quite clear, let us take the 
case of a city where the same principle may be 
seen at work on a smaller scale. In 1910, in 
the city of Berlin, there were: 

931 voters of the first class paying 27,914,593 

marks of the total tax. 
32,131 voters of the second class paying 27,908,- 

776 marks of the total tax. 
357,345 voters of the third class paying 16,165,- 

501 marks of the total tax. 

Roughly the voters in the first class each paid 
$7,500; those in the second class $218; those 
in the third class $11. The 931 voters elected 
one-third, 32,131 voters elected one-third, and 
357,345 elected one-third of the town council- 
lors. In this same year in Berlin there were: 

521 persons with incomes between $25,000 and 

$62,500. 
139 persons with incomes between $62,500 and 

$125,000. 



80 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

22 persons with incomes between $125,000 and 
$187,500. 

19 persons with incomes between $187,000 and 
$250,000. 

19 persons with incomes of $250,000 or more. 
Or 720 persons in Berlin in 1912 with in- 
comes of over $25,000 a year, and they are 
practically the governors of the city. 

As a result of these divisions according to taxes 
paid, of the 144 town councillors elected, only 38 
were Social-Democrats, though Berlin is over- 
whelmingly Social-Democratic, and consequently 
the affairs of this city of more than 2,000,000 
inhabitants are in the hands of 33,062 persons 
who elect two-thirds of the town councillors. 

In the city of Dusseldorf there were, exclud- 
ing the suburbs, 62,443 voters at the election for 
town councillors in 1910. The first class was 
composed of 797 voters paying from 1,940 to 
264,252 marks of taxes; 6,645 voters paying 
from 222 to 1,939 marks; and 55,001 voters pay- 
ing 221 marks or less. These 7,442 voters of the 
first and second classes were in complete control 
of the city government by a clear majority of 
two-thirds. 

It is this three-class system of voting that 
makes Prussia, and the Prussian cities as well, 
impregnable against any assault from the demo- 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 81 

cratically inclined. In addition to this system, 
the old electoral divisions of forty years ago 
remain unchanged, and consequently the agri- 
cultural east of Prussia, including east and west 
Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Posen, and 
Silesia, with their large landholders, return more 
members to the Prussian lower house than the 
much greater population of western industrial 
Prussia, which includes Sachsen, Hanover, West- 
phalia, Schleswig-IIolstein, Hohenzollern, Hes- 
sen-Nassau, and the Rhine. Further, the execu- 
tive government of Prussia is conducted by a 
ministry of state, the members of which are 
appointed by the King, and hold office at his 
pleasure, without control from the Landtag. 

How little the people succeeded in extorting 
from King Frederick William IV in the way 
of a constitution may be gathered from this 
glimpse of the present political conditions of 
Prussia. 

The local government of Prussia is practically 
as centralized in a few hands as the executive 
government of the state itself. The largest areas 
are the provinces, whose chiefs or presidents also 
are appointed by the sovereign, and who repre- 
sent the central government. There are twelve 
such provinces in Prussia, ranging in size from 
the Rhineland and Brandenburg, with 7,ll20,519 



82 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and 4,093,007 inliabitants respectively, to Schles- 
wig-Holstein, with 1,619,673. 

Each province is divided into two or more 
government districts, of which there are thirty- 
five in all. At the head of each of these districts 
is the district president, also appointed by the 
crown. 

In addition there is the Kreis, or Circle, of 
which there are some 490, with populations vary- 
ing from 20,000 to 801,000. These circles are, 
for all practical purposes, governed by the Land- 
rath, who is appointed for life by the crown, 
and who is so fully recognized as the agent of the 
central government and not as the servant of 
the locality in which he rules, that on one oc- 
casion several Landrathe were summarily dis- 
missed for voting against the government and in 
conformity to the wishes of the inhabitants of 
the circle in which they lived! Though the 
Landrath is nominated by the circle assembly for 
appointment by the crown, he can be dismissed 
by his superiors of the central hierarchy. As his 
promotion, and his career in fact, is dependent 
upon these superiors, he naturally sides with the 
central government in all cases of dispute or 
friction. 

Further, and this is important, all officials in 
Germany are legally privileged persons. All 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 83 

disputes between individuals and public author- 
ities in Germany are decided by tribunals quite 
distinct from the ordinary courts. These courts 
are specially constituted, and they aim at pro- 
tecting the officials from any personal responsi- 
bility for acts done by them in their official 
capacity. 

In America, and I presume in Great Britain 
also, any disputes between public authorities and 
private individuals are settled in the ordinary 
courts of justice, under the rules of the ordinary 
law of the land. This super-common-law posi- 
tion of the Prussian official is a fatal incentive to 
the aggravating exaggeration of his importance, 
and to the indifference of his behavior to the 
private citizen. There may be officials who are 
uninfluenced by this sheltered position, indeed I 
know personally many who are, but there is 
equally no doubt that many succumb to arro- 
gance and lethargy as a consequence. 

How thoroughly Prussia is covered by a net- 
work of officialdom, is further discovered when 
it is known, that the entire area of Prussia is 
some twenty thousand square miles less than 
that of the State of California. The whole Prus- 
sian doctrine of local self-government, too, is 
entirely difl'erent from ours. Their idea is that 
self-government is the performance by locally 



84 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

elected bodies of the will of the state, not neces- 
sarily of the locality which elects them. Local 
authorities, whether elected or not, are supposed 
to be primarily the agents of the state, and only 
secondarily the agents of the particular locality 
they serve. In Prussia, all provincial and circle 
assemblies and communal councils, may be dis- 
solved by royal decree, hence even these elected 
assemblies may only serve their constituencies 
at the will and pleasure of the central authority. 
It would avail little to go into minute details 
in describing the government of Prussia; this 
slight sketch of the electoral system, and of the 
centralization of the government, suffices to show 
two things that it is particularly my purpose to 
make clear. One is the preponderating influ- 
ence of Prussia in the empire, due to the mainte- 
nance of power in a single person; and the other 
is to show how ridiculously futile it is to refer 
to Prussia as an example of the success of social 
legislation. The state ownership of railroads, 
old-age pensions, accident and sickness insur- 
ance, and the like are one thing in Prussia which 
is a close corporation, and quite another in any 
community or country under democratic govern- 
ment. What takes place in Prussia would cer- 
tainly not take place in America or in England. 
To draw inferences from a state governed as is 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 85 

Prussia, for application to such democratic com- 
munities as America or England, is as valuable 
as to argue from the habits of birds, that such 
and such a treatment would succeed with fish. 

It was with this autocratic Prussia at his back, 
that the greatest man Germany has produced, 
succeeded in bringing about German unity and 
the foundation of the German Empire. As the 
representative of Prussia in the Diet, as her 
ambassador to Russia, and to France, he gained 
the insight into the European situation which 
led him to hold as his political creed, that only 
by blood and iron, and not by declamations and 
resolutions, could Germany be united. 

"During the time I was in office," he writes, 
*'I advised three wars, the Danish, the Bohemian, 
and the French; but every time I have first made 
clear to myself whether the war, if successful, 
would bring a prize of victory worth the sacri- 
fices which every war requires, and which now 
are so much greater than in the last century. 
... I have never looked at international quar- 
rels which can only be settled by a national war 
from the point of view of the Gottingen student 
code; . . . but I have always considered simply 
their reaction on the claim of the German peo- 
ple, in eciuallty with the other great states and 
powers of Europe, to lead an autonomous polit- 



86 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ical life, so far as is possible on the basis of our 
peculiar national capacity." In 1863 he writes 
to von der Goltz, then German ambassador in 
Paris: "The question is whether we are a great 
power or a state in the German federation, 
and whether we are conformably to the former 
quality to be governed by a monarch, or, as in 
the latter case would be at any rate admissible, 
by professors, district judges, and the gossips of 
the small towns. The pursuit of the phantom 
of popularity in Germany which we have been 
carrying on for the last forty years has cost us 
our position in Germany and in Europe; and we 
shall not win this back again by allowing our- 
selves to be carried away by the stream in the 
persuasion that we are directing its course, but 
only by standing firmly on our legs and being, 
first of all, a great power and a German federal 
state afterward.'" 

After Napoleon and the interminable elocu- 
tionary squabbles of the German states, first, 
for constitutional rights, and, second, for some 
basis of unity among themselves, which were 
the two main streams of political activity, there 
were three main steps in the formation of the 
now existing empire: first, in 1866, the North 
German Confederation under the presidency of 
Prussia and excluding Austria; second, the con- 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 87 

elusion of treaties, 1866-1867, between the North 
German Confederation and the south German 
states; third, the formal union of the north and 
south German states as an empire in 1871. 

Although the Holy Roman Empire ceased to 
exist legally in 1806, it is to be remembered that 
as a fiction weighing still upon the imagination 
of German politicians, it did not wholly disap- 
pear until the war between Prussia and Austria, 
for then Prussia fought not only Austria but 
Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, Hanover, Nas- 
sau, Baden, and the two Hesse states, and at 
Sadowa in Bohemia the war was settled by the 
defeat of the Austrians before they could be 
joined by these allies, who were disposed of in 
detail. Frankfort was so harshly treated that 
the mayor hanged himself, and the Prussianizing 
of Hanover has never been entirely forgiven, 
and the claimants to the throne in exile are still 
the centre of a political party antagonistic to 
Prussia. The taking over of north Schleswig, 
of Hanover, Ilesse-Cassel, and Nassau by Prus- 
sia after the Austrian war was according to the 
rough arbitrament of conquest. *'Our right," 
replied Bismarck to the just criticism of this 
spohation, "is the right of the German nation 
to exist, to breathe, to be united; it is the 
right and the duty of Prussia to give the Ger- 



88 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

man nation the foundation necessary for its 
existence." In taking Alsace-Lorraine from 
France, Bismarck insisted that this was a neces- 
sary barrier against France and that Germany's 
possession of Metz and Strassburg were necessi- 
ties of the situation also. 

The history of German unity is the biography 
of Bismarck. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bis- 
marck was born in Schonhausen, in that Mark of 
Brandenburg which was the cradle of the Prus- 
sian monarchy, on the first of April, 1815. His 
grandfather fought at Rossbach under the great 
Frederick. He was confirmed in Berlin in 1831 
by the famous pastor and theologian, Schleier- 
macher, and maintained all his life that without 
his belief in God he would have found no reason 
for his patriotism or for any serious work in life. 

He matriculated as a student of law and 
science at Gottingen in May, 1832, and later 
at Berlin in 1834. He was a tall, large-limbed, 
blue-eyed young giant, the boldest rider, the 
best swordsman, and the heartiest drinker of his 
day. He is still looked upon in Germany as the 
typical hero of corps student life, and his pipe, 
or his Schlager, or his cap, or his Kneipe jacket 
is preserved as the relic of a saint. His was not 
the tepid virtue born of lack of vitality. One 
has but to remember Augustine and Origen and 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 89 

Ignatius Loyola, to recall the fact that the 
preachers of salvation, the best of them, have 
generally had themselves to tame before they 
mastered the world. 

This youth Bismarck must have had some 
vigorous battles with Bismarck before he mar- 
ried Johanna Fricderika Charlotte Dorothea 
Eleanore von Puttkamer, July 28, 1847, much 
against the wishes of her parents, and settled 
down to his life-work. As was said of John Pym, 
*'he thought it part of a man's rehgion to see that 
his country was well governed," and his country 
became his passion. Like most men of intense 
feeling, he loved few people and loyally hated 
many. jNIore men feared and envied him than 
liked him. His wife, his sister, his king, a 
student friend, Keyserling, and the American, 
Motley, shared with his country his affection. 
Germany might well take it to heart that it was 
Motley the American who was of all men dearest 
to her giant creator. The same type of American 
would serve her better to-day than any other, 
did she only know it! In 1849 he was elected 
to the Prussian Chamber. In 1852 a whiff of 
the old dare-devil got loose, and he fought a duel 
with Freiherr von Vincke. 

In 1852 he is sent on his first responsible mis- 
sion to Vienna, and found there the traditions 



90 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of the Metternich diplomacy still ruling. What 
Napoleon had said of Metternich he no doubt 
remembered: "II ment trop. II faut mentir 
quelquefois, mais mentir tout le temps c'est 
trop!" for he adopted quite the opposite policy 
in his own diplomatic dealings. 

In 1855 he became a member of the upper 
house of Prussia, and in 1859 is sent as minister 
to St. Petersburg. In May, 1862, he is sent as 
minister to Paris, and learns to know, and not 
greatly to admire, the third Napoleon and his 
court. 

On the 23d of September, 1862, he is appointed 
Staats-minister, and a week later thunders out 
his famous blood-and-iron speech. On October 
the 8th, 1862, he is definitely named Minister 
President and Minister for Foreign Affairs. 

William I had succeeded his brother as king. 
He was a soldier and a believer in the army, and 
wished to spend more on it, and to lengthen the 
time of service with the colors to three years. 
The legislature opposed these measures. A min- 
ister was needed who could bully the legisla- 
ture, and Bismarck was chosen for the task. He 
spent the necessary money despite the legisla- 
tive opposition, pleading that a legislature that 
refused to vote necessary supplies had i'pso facto 
laid down its proper functions, and the king 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 91 

must take over the responsibilities of govern- 
ment that they declined to exercise. The cav- 
alry boots were l)eginning to trample their way 
to Paris, and to the crowning of an emperor. 

In February, 1864, Prussia and Austria to- 
gether declare war upon Denmark over the 
Schleswig-Holstein succession. They agree to 
govern the spoils between them, but fall out over 
the question of their respective jurisdiction, and 
the Prussian army being ready, and the Moltke 
plan of campaign worked out, war is declared, 
and in seven weeks the Treaty of Prague is 
signed, in 18G6, bj^ which Austria gives up all her 
rights in Schleswig-IIolstein, and abandons her 
claim to take part in the reorganization of Ger- 
many. The North German Confederation is 
formed to include all lands north of the Main; 
Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, the Hesse states, 
Nassau, and Frankfurt-am-Main become part of 
Prussia; and the south German states agree to 
remain neutral, but allies of Prussia in war. 

On the 11th of March, 1867, a month after the 
formation of the Confederation of the Xortli 
German States, Bismarck proclaims with pride 
in the new Reichstag: "Setzen wir Deutschland, 
so zu sagen, in den Sattel! Reiton wird es schon 
konnen!" 

October 13th, 1868, Leopold von Sigmaringoii, 



92 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

a German prince of the House of Hohenzollern, 
is named for the first time as a candidate for 
the Spanish throne. Nobody in Germany, or 
anywhere else, was much more interested in this 
candidature, than we are now interested in the 
woman's suffrage or the prohibition candidate 
at home. But France had looked on with jeal- 
ous eyes at the vigorous growth and martial suc- 
cesses of Prussia. It was thought well to attack 
her and humiliate her before she became stronger. 
All France was convinced, too, that the southern 
German states would revert to their old love in 
case of actual war, and side with the nephew of 
their former friend, the great Napoleon. The 
French ambassador is instructed to force the 
pace. Not only must the Prussian King disavow 
all intention to support the candidacy of the Ger- 
man prince, but he must be asked to humiliate 
himself by binding himseK never in the future 
to push such claims. 

William I is at Ems, and Benedetti, the French 
ambassador, reluctantly presses the insulting 
demand of his country upon the royal gentle- 
man as he is walking. The King declines to see 
Benedetti again, and telegraphs to Bismarck the 
gist of the interview. Lord Acton writes: "He 
[Bismarck] drew his long pencil and altered the 
text, showing only that Benedetti had presented 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 93 

an offensive demand, and that the King had re- 
fused to see him. That there might be no mis- 
take he made this offieial by sending it to all the 
embassies and legations. Moltke exclaimed, 
*You have converted surrender into defiance.'" 
The altered telegram was also sent to the Nord- 
deutschcr AJlgemeine Zeitung and to officials. It 
is not perhaps generally known that General 
Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to discuss 
an alliance with Austria for an attack on the 
North German Confederation in the following 
spring. Bismarck knew this. This was on the 
13th of July, 1870; on the IGth the order was 
given to mobilize the army, on the 31st followed 
the proclamation of the King to his people: 
"Zur Errettung des Vaterlandes." On Au- 
gust the 2d, King William took command of the 
German armies, and on September 1st, Napo- 
leon handed over his sword, and on January 
the 18th, 1871, King William of Prussia was 
proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of the 
Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles. 

"It sounds so lovely what our fathers did, 
And what we do is, as it was to them, 
Toilsome and incomplete." 

It is easy to forget in such a rapid survey of 
events that Bismarck could have had any seri- 



94 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ous opposition to face as he tramped through 
those eight years, from 1862 to 1870, with a king- 
dom on his back. It is easy to forget that King 
WilHam himself wished to abdicate in those dark 
hours, when his people refused him their confi- 
dence, and called a halt upon his endeavors to 
strengthen the absolutely essential instrument 
for Prussia's development, the army; it is easy 
to forget that even the silent and seemingly im- 
perturbable Moltke hesitated and wavered a 
little at the audacity of his comrade; it is easy 
to forget the conspiracy of opposition of the 
three women of the court, the Crown Princess, 
Erau von Blumenthal, and Frau von Gottberg, 
all of English birth, and all using needles against 
this man accustomed to the Schlager and the 
sword; it is easy to forget that even Queen Vic- 
toria's influence was used against him to pre- 
vent the reaping of the justifiable fruits of vic- 
tory in 1871; it is easy to forget what a bold 
throw it was to go to war with Austria, and to 
array Prussia against the very German states 
she must later bind to herself; it is easy to for- 
get the dour patience of this irascible giant with 
the petulant and often petty legislature with 
which he had to deal. 

I cannot understand how any German can 
criticise Bismarck, but there are official prigs 



FREDERICK T(^ J3ISMARCK 95 

who do; little decorated bureaucrats who live 
their lives out poring over papers, with an eye 
out for a "von" before their bourgeois names, 
and as void of audacity as a sheep; men who 
creep up the stairway to promotion and recogni- 
tion, clinging with cautious grip to the banis- 
ters. One sees them, their coats covered with 
the ceramic insignia of their placid servitude, 
decorations tossed to them by the careless hand 
of a master who is satisfied if they but sign his 
decrees, with the i's properly dotted, and the t's 
unexceptionably crossed. They are the crumply 
officials who melted into defencelessness and 
moral decrepitude after Frederick the Great, 
and again at the glance of Napoleon, and who 
owe the little stiffness they have to the fact that 
Bismarck lived. It is one of the things a 
full-blooded man is least able to bear in Ger- 
many, to hear the querulous questioning of the 
great deeds of this man, whose boot-legs were 
stiffer than the backbones of those who decry 
him. 

\Yhat a splendid fellow he was! 

"Give me ihe spirit llial, on this life's rough 

sea, 
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind. 
Even till his sail-yards tremble and his masts do 

crack, 



96 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

And his rapt ship run on her side so low 
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air. 
There is no danger to a man that knows 
What life and death is — there's not any law 
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful 
That he should stoop to any other law." 

He was no worshipper of that flimsy culture 
which is, and has been for a hundred years, an 
obsession of the German. He knew, none knew 
better indeed, that the choicest knowledge is 
only mitigated ignorance. He surprised Dis- 
raeli with his mastery of English, and Napoleon 
with his fluency in French, both of which he had 
learned from his Huguenot professors. The pop- 
ular man, the popular book, the popular music, 
picture, or play, were none of them a golden 
calf to, him. He mastered what he needed for 
his work, and pretended to no enthusiasm for 
intellectualism as such. He knew that there 
is no real culture without character, and that 
the mere aptitude for knowing and doing with- 
out character is merely the simian cleverness 
that often dazzles but never does anything of 
importance. "Culture!" writes Henry Morley, 
"the aim of culture is to bring forth in their due 
season the fruits of the earth." Any learning, 
any accomplishments, that do not serve a man 
to bring forth the fruits of the earth in their due 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 97 

season are merely mental gimcraeks, flimsy toys, 
to admire perhaps, to play wi 111, and to be thrown 
aside as useless when duty makes its sovereign 
demands. 

Much as Germany has done for the develop- 
ment of the intellectual life of the world, she 
has suffered not a little from the superficial be- 
lief still widely held that instruction, that learn- 
ing, are culture. Their Great Elector, their 
Frederick the Great, and their Bismarck, should 
have taught them the contrary by now. 

The newly crowned German Emperor left 
Versailles on March 7th for Berlin, and on March 
21st the first Diet of the new empire was 
opened, and began the task of adapting the con- 
stitution to the altered circumstances of the new 
empire. 

The German Empire now consists of four 
kingdoms: Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and ^Yur- 
temberg; of six grand duchies: Baden, Hesse- 
Darmstadt, Saxe-Weimar, Oldenburg, Meck- 
lenburg-Strelitz, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; of 
five duchies: Saxe-Meinigen, Saxe-Allcnburg 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Brunswick, and Anliall; of 
seven principalities : Schwartzburg-Sondershau- 
sen, Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt, Waldeck, Reuss 
(older line), Reuss (younger line), Lippe, and 
Schaumburg-Lippe; of three free towns: Ilam- 



98 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

burg, Bremen, and Ltibeck; and of one imperial 
province: Alsace Lorraine. 

The new empire is in a sense a continuation of 
the North German Confederation. There are 
25 states, the largest, Prussia, with a population 
of over 40,000,000; the smallest, Schaumburg- 
Lippe, with a population of a little more than 
46,000 and an area of 131 square miles. 

The central or federal authority controls the 
army, navy, foreign relations, railways, main 
roads, canals, post and telegraph, coinage, 
weights and measures, copyrights, patents, and 
legislation over nearly the whole field of civil 
and criminal law, regulation of press and associ- 
ations, imperial finance and customs tariffs, 
which are now the same throughout Germany. 

Bavaria still manages her own railways, and 
Saxony and Wiirtemberg have certain privileges 
and exemptions. Administration is still almost 
entirely in the hands of the separate states. 

The law is imperial, but the judges are ap- 
pointed by the states, and are under its authority. 
The supreme court of appeal (Reichsgericht) 
sits at Leipsic. 

The head of the executive government is the 
Emperor, no longer elective but hereditary, and 
attached to the office of the King of Prussia. 
Outside of Prussia he has little power in civil 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 99 

matters and no veto on legislation. He is com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and of the navy; 
foreign affairs are in his hands, and in the 
federal council, or Bundesrath, he exercises a 
mighty influence due to Prussia's preponderating 
influence and voting power. There is no cabinet, 
just as there is no cabinet in Great Britain, that 
modern institution being merely a legislative 
fiction down to this day. The chancellor of 
the empire, who is also prime minister of Prus- 
sia, with several secretaries of state, is chief 
minister for all imperial affairs. The chancellor 
presides in the Bundesrath, and has the right to 
speak in the Reichstag, and frequently does 
speak there. Indeed, all his more important pro- 
nouncements are made there. The chancellor 
is responsible to the Emperor alone, by whom he 
is nominated, and not to the representatives of 
the people. 

The federal council, or Bundesrath, or upper 
chamber of the empire, consists of delegates ap- 
pointed by and representing the rulers of the 
various states. There are 58 members. Prussia 
has 17, Bavaria C, Saxony 4, "WUrtemberg 4, 
Baden 3, Ilessen 3, ^lecklcnburg-Schwerin 2, 
Brunswick 2, and each of the other states 1. 

This body meets in Berlin, sits in secret, and 
the delegates have no discretion, but vote as 



100 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

directed by their state governments. Here it is 
that Prussia, and through Prussia the Emperor, 
dominates. This Bundesrath is the most power- 
ful upper chamber in the world. With respect 
to all laws concerning the army and navy, and 
taxation for imperial purposes, the vote of Prus- 
sia shall decide disputes, if such vote be cast in 
favor of maintaining existing arrangements. In 
other words, Prussia is armed in the Bundesrath 
with a conservative veto ! In declaring war and 
making treaties, the consent of the Bundesrath 
is required. The following articles also give 
the Bundesrath a very complete control of the 
Reichstag. Article 7 reads: "The Bundesrath 
shall take action upon (1) the measures to be 
proposed to the Reichstag and the resolutions 
passed by the same; (2) the general administra- 
tive provisions and arrangements necessary for 
the execution of the imperial laws, so far as no 
other provision is made by law; (3) the defects 
which may be discovered in the execution of the 
imperial laws or of the provisions and arrange- 
ments heretofore mentioned." 

The Reichstag, or lower house, is elected by 
universal suffrage in electoral districts which 
were originally equal, but as we have noted are 
far from equal now. This house has three hun- 
dred and ninety-seven members, of whom two 



FREDERICK TO 15ISMARCK 101 

hundred and lliirty-fivc are from Prussia. Tl 
sils for five years, hut may !)c dissolved by Ihc 
Bundesrath with the consent of the Emperor. 
All members of the Bundesrath, as well as the 
chancellor, may speak in tlie Jleichstag. Nor 
the chancellor, nor any other executive officer, 
is responsifjle to the Reiclistag, nor can be re- 
moved by its vote, and tlic ministers of the Em- 
peror are seldom or never chosen from this body. 
This Reichstag is really only nominally a portion 
of the governing body. It has the right to refuse 
to pass a bill presented by the government, but 
if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as 
has happened several times, and another election 
usually provides a more amenable body. 

Of the various political parties in the Reichs- 
tag we have written elsewhere. It is, perhaps, 
fair to say that such powerful parties as the So- 
cialists and the Centrum must be reckoned with 
by the chancellor. He cannot actually trample 
upon them, nor can he disregard wliolly their 
wishes in framing and in carrying through legis- 
lation. It would be going much too far in char- 
acterizing the weakness of the Reichstag to leave 
that impression upon the reader. None tlie less 
it remains true tlint it is tlie executiv^e who rules 
and has the whip-hand, and who in a grave crisis 
can override the representatives of the people 



102 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

assembled in the Reichstag, and on more than 
one occasion this has been done. 

It seems highly unnecessary to announce after 
this description of the imperial constitution that 
there is no such thing in Germany as democratic 
or representative government. But this fact 
cannot be proclaimed too often since in other 
countries it is continually assumed that this 
is the case. All sorts of deductions are made, 
all sorts of illustrations used, all sorts of legis- 
lative and social lessons taught from the example 
of Germany, without the smallest knowledge 
apparently on the part of those who make them, 
that Germany to-day is no more democratic than 
was Turkey twenty years ago. 

What can be done and what is done in Ger- 
many has no possible bearing upon what can be 
done in America or in England. All analogies 
are false, all illustrations futile, all examples 
valueless, for the one reason that the empire 
of Germany is governed by one man, who de- 
claims his independence of the people and admits 
his responsibility to God alone. This may be 
either a good or a bad thing. Certainly in many 
matters of economical and comfortable govern- 
ment for the people— witness more particularly 
the development and wise control of their mu- 
nicipalities — they are a century ahead of us, but 



1 REDERICK TO BISMARCK 103 

this is not the question under discussion. The 
point is, tluit a compile t nation under strict 
centralized control, served by a trained horde 
of officials with no wish for a change, and 
backed by a standing army of over seven hun- 
dred thousand men, who are not only a defence 
against the foreigner, but a powerful police 
against internal revolution, cannot serve as a 
model in either its successes or failures for a 
democratic country like ours. Where in Ger- 
many legislative schemes succeed easily when 
this huge bureaucratic machine is behind them, 
they would fail ignominiously in a country lack- 
ing this machinery, and lacking these pitia- 
bly tame people accustomed to submission. 

In France, for example, that thrifty and indi- 
vidualistic folk made a complete failure of the at- 
tempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon 
them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary leg- 
islation can succeed with us. That, however, 
is neither here nor there. The gist of the mat- 
ter is, that because such things succeed in Ger- 
many, gives not the slightest reason for sup- 
posing that they will succeed with us. If this 
outline of their history and this sketch of their 
government have done nothing else, it must have 
made this clear. It may also help to show how 
vapid is [\\v talk about wlial llic German people 



104 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

will or will not do; whether they will or will not 
have war, for example. We shall have war 
when the German Kaiser touches a button and 
gives an order, and the German people will have 
no more to say in the matter than you and I. 



Ill 

THE INDISCREET 

THE casual observer of life in England 
would find himself forced to write of 
sport, even as in India he would write 
of caste, as in America he would note the un- 
due emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, 
wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the 
army, to inquire about the navy, to study the 
constitution, or to disentangle the web of 
present-day political strife; to read the figures 
of commercial and industrial progress, or the 
results of social legislation; to look on at the 
Germans at play during their yachting week at 
Kiel, or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he 
finds himself face to face with the Emperor. 

The student visits Berlin, or Potsdam, or 
Wilhclmshohe; or with a long stride finds him- 
self on the docks at Hamburg or Bremen, or 
beside the Kiel Canal, or in Kiel harl)or facing 
a fleet of war-ships; or he lifts his eyes into the 
air to see a dirigible balloon returning from a 
voyage of two hundred and fifty miles toward 

105 



106 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

London over the North Sea, and the Emperor 
is there. Is it the palace hidden in its shrub- 
bery in the country; is it the clean, broad streets 
and decorations of the capital; is it a discussion 
of domestic poUtics, or a question of foreign pol- 
itics, the Emperor's hand is there. His opinion, 
his influence, what he has said or has not said, 
are inextricably interwoven with the woof and 
web of German life. 

We may like him or dislike him, approve or 
disapprove, rejoice in autocracy or abominate it, 
admire the far-reaching discipline, or regret the 
iron mould in which much of German life is en- 
cased, but for the moment all this is beside the 
mark. Here is a man who in a quarter of a 
century has so grown into the life of a nation, 
the most powerful on the continent, and one of 
the three most powerful in the world, that when 
you touch it anywhere you touch him, and when 
you think of it from any angle of thought, or 
describe it from any point of view, you find 
yourself including him. 

Personally, I should have been glad to leave 
this chapter unwritten. I have no taste for the 
discussion and analysis of living persons, even 
when they are of such historic and social im- 
portance, and of such magnitude, that I am thus 
given the proverbial license of the cat. But to 



THE INDISCREET 107 

write about Germany without writing about tlic 
Emperor is as impossible as to jump away from 
one's own shadow. When the sun is behind 
any phase or department of German hfe, the 
shadow cast is that of Germany's Emperor. 

This is not said because it is pleasing to whom- 
soever it may be, for in Germany, and in much 
of the world outside Germany, this situation is 
looked upon as unfavorable, and even deplor- 
able; and certainly no American can look upon 
it with equanimity, for it is of the essence of 
his Americanism to distrust it. It is, however, 
so much a fact that to neglect a discussion of 
this personality would be to leave even so slight 
a sketch of Germany as this, hopelessly lop-sided. 
He so pervades German life that to write of the 
Germany of the last twenty-five years without 
attempting to describe William the Second, 
German Emperor, would be to leave every 
question, institution, and problem of the coun- 
try without its master-key. 

In other chapters dealing more particularly 
with the political development of Germany, and 
with the salient characteristics, mental and 
moral, of the people, we shall see how it has 
come about, that one man can thus impregnate 
a whole nation of sixty-five millions with his 
own aims and ambitions, to such an extent, that 



108 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

they may be said, so to speak, to live their 
pohtical, social, martial, religious, and even 
their industrial, life in him. It is a phenomenon 
of personality that exists nowhere else in the 
world to-day, and on so large a scale and among 
so enlightened a people, perhaps never before in 
history. 

Nothing has made scientific accuracy in deal- 
ing with the most interesting and most important 
factors in the world, so utterly inaccurate and 
misleading, as those infallibly accurate and im- 
personal agents, electricity and the sun. If one 
were to judge a man by his photographs, and the 
gossip of the press, one would be sure to know 
nothing more valuable about him than that his 
mustache is brushed up, and that his brows are 
permanently lowering. Personality is so evasive 
that one may count upon it that when a machine 
says "There it is!" then there it is not! You 
will have everything that is patent and nothing 
that is pertinent. 

We are forever talking and writing about the 
smallness of the world, of how much better we 
know one another, and of how much more we 
should love one another, now that we flash 
photographs and messages to and fro, at a speed 
of leagues a second. Nothing could be more 
futile and foolish. These things have empha- 



THE INDISCREET 109 

sized our difTerences, they have done nothing 
to reaHze our hkcncss to one anotlicr. Wc arc 
as far from one another as in the days, hitc in 
the tenth century, when they complained in 
England that men learned fierceness from the 
Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Flem- 
ing, and drunkenness from the Dane. 

As probably the outstanding figure and best- 
known, superficially known, man in the world, 
the German Emperor has escaped the notice of 
very few people who notice anything. His like- 
ness is everyw^here, and gossip about him is on 
every tongue. He is as familiar to the Ameri- 
can as Roosevelt, to the Englishman as Lloyd- 
George, to the Frenchman as Dreyfus, to the 
Russian as his Czar, and to the Chinese and 
Japanese as their most prominent political figure. 
And yet I should say that he is comparatively 
little known, either externally or internally, as 
he is. 

It is perhaps the fate of those of most influ- 
ence to be misunderstood. Of this, I fancy, 
the Emperor docs not complain. Indeed, those 
feeble folk wlio complain of being misunder- 
stood, ought to console themselves with the 
thought that practically all our imperishable 
monuments, are creeled lo the glory of those 
whom we condemned and criticised; starved 



110 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and stoned; burned and crucified, when we had 
them with us. 

WiUiam II, German Emperor and King of 
Prussia, was born January 27, 1859, and be- 
came German Emperor June 15, 1888. He is, 
therefore, in the prime of Hfe, and looks it. His 
complexion and eyes are as clear as those of an 
athlete, and his eyes, and his movements, and 
his talk are vibrating with energy. He stands, 
I should guess, about five feet eight or nine, 
has the figure and activity of an athletic youth 
of thirty, and in his hours of friendliness is as 
careless in speech, as unaffected in manner, as 
lacking in any suspicion of self -consciousness, or 
of any desire to impress you with his importance, 
as the simplest gentleman in the land. 

Alas, how often this courageous and gentle- 
manly attitude has been taken advantage of ! I 
have headed this chapter The Indiscreet, and I 
propose to examine these so-called indiscretions 
in some detail, but for the moment I must ask: 
Is there any excuse for, or any social punish- 
ment too severe for, the man who, introduced 
into a gentleman's house in the guise of a gen- 
tleman, often by his own ambassador, leaves it, 
to blab every detail of the conversation of his 
host, with the gesticulations and exclamation 
points added by himself? To add a little to his 



THE INDISCREET 111 

own importance, he will steal out with the con- 
versational forks and spoons in his pockets, and 
rush to a newspaper oflice to tell the world that 
he has kept his soiled napkin as a souvenir. 
The only indiscretion in such a case is when the 
host, or his advisers, or gentlemen anywhere, 
heed the lunatic laughter of such a social 
jackal. 

To count one's words, to tie up one's phrases 
in caution, to dip each sentence in a diplomatic 
antiseptic, in the company of those to whom 
one has conceded hospitahty, what a feeble 
policy! Better be brayed to the world every 
day as indiscreet than that! 

It is a fine quality in a man to be in love with 
his job. Even though you have little sympathy 
w^ith Savonarola's fierceness or Wesley's hard- 
ness, they were burning up all the time with 
their allegiance to their ideals of salvation. 
They served their Lord as lovers. Many men, 
even kings and princes and other potentates, 
give the impression that they would enjoy a 
holiday from their task. They seem to be 
harnessed to their duties rather ilian possessed 
by them; they appear like disillusioned hus- 
bands rather than as radiant lovers. 

The German Emperor is not of that class. 
He loves his job. In his first proclamation to 



112 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

his people he declared that he had taken over 
the government "in the presence of the King of 
kings, promising God to be a just and merciful 
prince, cultivating piety and the fear of God." 
He has proclaimed himself to be, as did Frederick 
the Great and his grandfather before him, the 
servant of his people. Certainly no one in the 
German Empire works harder, and what is far 
more difficult and far more self-denying, no one 
keeps himself fitter for his duties than he. He 
eats no red meat, drinks almost no alcohol, 
smokes very little, takes a very light meal at 
night, goes to bed early and gets up early. He 
rides, walks, shoots, plays tennis, and is as much 
in the open air as his duties permit. 

It is not easy for the American to put side by 
side the attitudes of a man, who is the auto- 
cratic master and at the same time declares 
himself to be the first servant of his people. 
Perhaps if it is phrased differently it will not 
seem so contradictory. What this Emperor 
means, and what all princes who have believed 
in their right to rule meant, was not that they 
were the servants of their people, but the ser- 
vants of their own obligations to their people, 
and of the duties that followed therefrom. If 
in addition to this the claim is made by the sov- 
ereign, that his right to rule is of divine origin. 



THE INDISCREET 113 

then his service to his ohHgations becomes of 
the highest and most sacred importance. 

We shonld not allow onr democratic prejudices 
to stifle our understanding in such matters. We 
are trying to get clearly in perspective a ruler, 
who claims to rule in obedience to no mandates 
from the people, but in obedience to God. We 
could not be ruled by such a one in America; 
and in England such a ruler would be deemed 
unconstitutional. It is elementary, but neces- 
sary to repeat, that we are writing of Germany 
and the Germans, and of their history, tradi- 
tions, and political methods. We are making no 
defence of either the German Emperor or the 
German people; neither are we occupying an 
American pulpit to preach to them the superi- 
ority of other methods than their own. My sole 
task is to make clear the German situation, and 
not by any means to set up my own or my coun- 
trymen's standards for their adoption. I am 
not searching for that paltry and ephemeral 
profit that comes from finding opportiuiities to 
laugh or to sneer. I am seeking for the German 
successes, and they are many, and for the reasons 
for them, and for the lessons that we may learn 
frotn them. Any oilier aim in wriliiig of another 
people is ignol)le. 

This attitude of the ruler will be as incom- 



114 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

proliciisible to the democratic citizen as al- 
chemy, but, in order to draw anything hke 
true inferences or useful deductions, in order to 
understand the situation and to get a true like- 
ness of the ruler, one must take this utterly un- 
familiar and to us incomprehensible claim into 
consideration, and acknowledge its existence 
whether we admit the claim as justifiable or not. 
The relation of such a ruler to his people is like 
that of a Catholic bishop to his flock. The 
contract is not one made with hands, but is an 
inalienable right on the one hand, and an undis- 
severable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote 
on this subject: 'Tlir mich sind die Worte, ' von 
Gottes Gnaden,' welche christliche Herrscher 
ihrem Namen beifligen, kein leerer Schall, son- 
dern ich sehe darin das Bekenntniss, des Fiir- 
sten das Scepter was ilmen Gott verliehen 
hat, nur nach Gottes Willen auf Erden fiihren 
wollen." 

On several occasions the German Emperor 
has made it unmistakably clear that this is his 
view of the origin and sanctity of his responsi- 
bilities. *'If we have been able to accomplish 
what has been accomplished, it is due above all 
things to the fact that our house possesses a 
tradition by virtue of w^liich we consider that 
we have been appointed by God to preserve and 



THE INDISCREET 115 

direct, for their own welfare, the people over 
whom lie has given us power," 1Mi(;se words 
are from a speech made in 1807 at Bremen. In 
1010, at Konigsberg, he declares: "It was in 
this spot Ilia I my grandfather in his own right 
placed the royal crown of Prussia upon his head, 
insisting once again that it was bestowed upon 
him by the grace of God alone, and not ])y par- 
liaments and meetings and decisions of the 
people. lie thus regarded himself as the chosen 
instrument of heaven, and as such carried out 
1 1 is duties as a ruler and lord. I consider myself 
such an instrument of heaven, and shall go my 
way without regard to the views and oi)inions 
of the day." 

Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular, and de- 
servedly popular, sailor brother of the Emperor, 
has signified his entire allegiance to this doctrine 
by saying that he was actuated by one single 
motive: "a desire to proclaim to the nations 
I lie gospel of your Majesty's sacred person, and 
to j)reach that gospel alike to those who will 
iislen and lo tliose who will not." 

This language has a strange and far-away 
sound to us. It is as though one should come 
into the market-place with the bannered j)onip 
of Milton's prose upon his lii)s. The vicious 
would think it a trick, the idle would look upon 



116 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

it as a heavy form of joking, the intelhgent 
would see in it a superstition, or a dream of 
knighthood that has faded into unrecognizable 
dimness. Some men, on the other hand, might 
wish that all rulers and governors whatsoever 
were equally touched with the sanctity of their 
obligations. 

It is somewhat strange in this connection to 
remember, that we all wish to have our wives 
and daughters believers; that we all wish to 
bind to us those whom we love with more 
sacred bonds than those which we ourselves 
can supply. We are none of us loath to have 
those who keep our treasures, believe in some 
code higher than that of "honesty is the best 
policy." As Archbishop Whately said: "Hon- 
esty is the best policy, but he who is honest for 
that reason is not an honest man." 

Far be it from me to appear as an advocate 
of the divine right of kings; but I am no fit 
person for this particular task if I have only a 
sniff, or a guffaw, as an explanation of another's 
beliefs. History sparkles with the lives of men 
and women, who proclaimed themselves mes- 
sengers and servants of God, obedient to him 
first, and utterly and courageously negligent of 
that feline commodity, public opinion. Every 
man, even to-day. 



THE INDISCREET 117 

"Who cacli for llic joy of llic working, iiikI rac-li in his s<'paratc 
star. 
Shall draw tin- Thing as he soos It for the God of 'J'liings aa 
Tlu'y Arc," 

has a grain of this salt of divine independence 
in him. To-day, even as in the days of Pericles: 
"It is ever from the greatest hazards that the 
greatest honors arc gained," and the greatest 
hazard of all is to shut your visor and couch 
your lance and have at your task with a whis- 
pered: God and my Ilight! It is well to re- 
member that under no government, whether 
democratic or aristocratic, has the individual 
ever been given any rights. He has ahvays 
everywhere been pointed to his duties; his rights 
he must conquer for himself. 

The liberal in theology, as the liberal in 
politics, has perhaps leaned too far toward 
softness. The democratization of religion has 
gone on with the rest, and in our rebound from 
Calvin, and John Knox, and Jonathan Edwards, 
we have left all discipline and authority out of 
account. We have preached so persistently of 
the fatherhood of God, of his nearness to us, of 
his profound pil y for us, llial W(^ liave lost sight 
of his justice and his power. This nearness has 
become a sort of innocuous neighborliness, and 
God is looked ui)on not as a ruler, but as a 
vaporish good fellow whose chief business it is 



118 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

to forgive. We have substituted a feverish- 
handed charity for a sinewy faith, and are ex- 
cusing our divorce from divinely imposed duties, 
by a cheerful but illicit intercourse with chance 
acquaintances, all of whom are dubbed social 
service. 

This Cashmere-shawl theology is as idle an 
interpretation of man's relation to the universe, 
and far more debilitating, than any that has 
gone before. When we come to measure rulers 
who make divine claims for their duties, from 
any such coign of flabbiness as this, no wonder 
we stand dumb. I am willing to concede that 
perhaps even an emperor has been baptized 
with the blood of the martyrs, and feels himself 
to be in all sincerity the instrument of God; if 
we are to understand this one, we must admit 
so much. 

In certain departments of life, we not only 
grant, but we demand, that our wives and 
mothers should look upon their special duties 
and peculiar functions as divinely imparted, and 
as beyond argument, and as above coercion. 
This assumption, therefore, of inalienable rights 
is not so strange to us; on the contrary, it is an 
every -day affair in most of our lives. This par- 
ticular manifestation of it is all that is new or 
surprising. We Americans and English look 



THE INDISCREET 119 

upon it as dangerous, bul the Germans, more 
mystical and far more lethargic about liberty 
than arc we, are not greatly disturbed by it. 
The secular press, largely in Jewish hands, and 
the new socialist members of the Reichstag, 
jealous of their prerogatives but unable to as- 
sert them, criticise and even scream their abhor- 
rence and unbelief; but I am much mistaken, 
if the mass of the Germans are at heart much 
disturbed by their Emperor's assertions of his 
divine right to rule. A conservative member 
of the Reichstag speaks of, "a parliament which 
will maintain the monarch in his strong posi- 
tion as the wearer of the German imperial 
crown, not the semblance of a monarch but one 
that is dependent upon something higher than 
party and parliament — one dependent upon 
the King of all kings." 

To a thoroughbred American, with two and 
more centuries of the traditions of independence 
behind him, this question of the divine right of 
kings is a commonplace. lie is a king himself, 
he holds his own rights to be divine, and his 
influence and his power to be limited only by 
his character and his abilities, like that of any 
other sovereign. He may rule over few or 
many, lie may control the destiny of only one 
or of many subjects, lie may be well known or 



120 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

little known, but that he is a sovereign individual 
by the grace of God, it never occurs to him to 
doubt. It is perhaps for this reason that the 
real American is placid and unself -conscious be- 
fore this claim. It is those who admit and suf- 
fer from the exactions and tyrannies of such a 
claim that he pities, not the man who makes it, 
whom he distrusts. I carry my sovereignty un- 
der my hat, says the American; if any man or 
men can knock off the hat and take away the 
sovereignty, there is a fair field and no favor; for 
those who whimper and complain of tyranny he 
has long since ceased to have a high regard. 

That William the Second is the chief figure 
of interest in the world to-day is due, not alone 
to this assumption of a divine relation to the 
state, or to his own vigorous and electric per- 
sonality, but to the freedom to develop and to 
express that personality. Men in politics have 
dwindled in importance and in power, as the 
voters have increased in numbers and in influ- 
ence. Genius must be true to itself to bloom 
luxuriantly. It is impossible to be seeking the 
suffrage of a constituency and at the same time 
to be wholly one's self. The German Emperor 
is unhampered, as is no other ruler, by considera- 
tions of popular favor; and at the same time he 
directs and influences not Russian peasants, nor 



THE INDISCREET 121 

Turkish slaves, l)ut an inslrucled, cnliglilciicd, 
and anibilious people. This environment is 
unique in the world to-day, and the Germans 
as a whole seem to consider their ruler a valua- 
ble asset, despite occasional vagaries that bring 
down their own and foreign criticism upon him. 

Here we have a versatile and vigorous per- 
sonality with no shadow of a stain upon his 
character, and with no question upon the part 
of his bitterest enemy of the honesty of his in- 
tentions, or of his devotion to his country's in- 
terests. So far as he has been assailed abroad, 
it is on the score that he has made his country 
so powerful in the last twenty-five years that 
Germany is a menace to other powers; so far 
as he has been criticised at home it is on the 
score of his indiscretions. 

It is of prime importance, therefore, both to 
glance at the progress of Germany and to ex- 
amine these so-called indiscretions. Through- 
out these chapters will be found facts and figures 
(l(\iling willi tlie fairj^-like change whicli has 
taken place in Germany since my own student 
clays. I can remember when a chimney was a 
rare sight. Now there are almost as many 
manufacturing towns as then there were chim- 
neys. Leipzig was a big country town, Pforz- 
heim, Chemnitz, Oschatz, Elberfeld, Riessa, 



122 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Kiel, Essen, Rheinhausen, and their armies of 
laborers, and their millions of output, were mere 
shadows of what they are now. 

In 1873, when Bismarck began his attempts 
at railway legislation, Germany was divided into 
sixty -three *' railway provinces," and there were 
fifteen hundred different tariffs, and it is to be 
remembered that it was only as late as 1882 
that the state system of railways at last tri- 
umphed in Prussia. In only ten years the rail- 
way trackage has increased from 49,041 to 
52,216 miles; the number of locomotives from 
18,291 to 26,612; freight-cars from 398,000 to 
558,000; the passengers carried from 804,000,000 
to 1,457,000,000; and the tons of freight car- 
ried from 341,000,000 tons to 519,000,000 tons. 
In Prussia alone there are 1,000,000 more horses, 
1,000,000 more beef cattle, and 10,000,000 more 
pigs. The total production of beet sugar in 
the world approximates 7,000,000 tons; of 
this amount Germany produces 2,500,000 tons. 
Great Britain consumes more sugar per head of 
the population than any other country, and of 
her consumption of 1,460,000 tons of beet sugar 
all of it is produced from beets grown on the 
continent. Between 1885 and 1912 the popu- 
lation increased from 46,000,000 to 66,000,000. 
The expenditure on the navy has increased in 



THE INDISCREET 123 

ilic last ten years from $47,500,000 to $110,000,- 
000, and the number of men from 31,157 to 
00,805, with another increase in both money 
and men, voted at the moment of this writing 
in tlic summer of 1912. 

The debt of Germany, cxcUisive of paper 
money, in 1887 was 486,201,000 marks; in 1903 
it stood at 2,733,500,000. In 1911 the funded 
debt of the empire was 4,524,000,000 marks, 
and the funded debt of the states 14,880,000,000; 
and the floating debt amounts to 991,000,000, 
of which Prussia alone bears 610,000,000 and 
the empire 300,000,000. Between the years 
1871 and 1897 a debt of $500,000,000 was in- 
curred, bearing an average interest charge of 
3M per cent. In the year 1908 the combined 
expenditures of the states and of the empire 
readied the enormous total of $1,775,000,000. 
The debt of the city of Berlin alone in 1910 had 
reached $110,750,000 and has increased in the 
last two years. 

For purposes of comparison one may note that 
our own later national budgets run roughly to 
$1,000,000,000. The British budget for 1911 
was $906,420,000. After the French war, specu- 
lation on a large scale ensued. The payment of 
ilu> $1,000,000,000 indeninily liad a bad effect. 
As lias ofli-n lia])prii(Hl in America, money, or 



124 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the mere means of exchange, was taken for 
wealth. The earth will be as cold as the moon 
before men learn that the only real wealth is 
health. Many schemes and companies were 
floated and after 1873 there was a prolonged 
financial crisis in Germany. It is said that 
bankruptcy and the liquidation of bubble com- 
panies entailed a loss of a round $90,000,000. 
It was in 1876-77, when Germany was thus 
suffering, that the policy of protection was 
mooted and finally put into operation by Bis- 
marck in 1879. Ten years later the laws for 
accident, old age, and sickness insurance were 
passed, at the instigation and under the direct 
influence of the present Emperor. 

The tonnage of steam vessels under 4,000 
tons in Great Britain (net tons) was, some five 
years ago, 8,165,527; in Germany (gross tons), 
977,410; but the tonnage of steam vessels of 
4,000 tons and over was in Great Britain 
1,446,486, in Germany 1,119,537! It should be 
added that no small part of Great Britain's big 
ships belong to the American Shipping Trust, 
sailing under the British flag. Albert Ballin be- 
came a director of the Hamburg-American line 
in 1886, and was made general director in 1900. 
During his directorship the capital of the line has 
been increased from 15,000,000 to 125,000,000 



THE INDISCREET 125 

of marks, and the number of steamers from 20 
to 170. 

Germany's combined export and import trade 
in 1880 was $1,429,025,000; in 1890, $1,875,- 
050,000; and in 1905 it was $3,324,018,000; in 
1910, $4,019,072,250. The German production 
of coal and coal products in 1910 was the highest 
in its history, amounting to 265,148,232 metric 
tons. It would be easy enough to chronicle the 
commercial and industrial strides of Germany 
during the last quarter of a century by the com- 
pilation of a catalogue of figures. It is not my 
intention to persuade the reader to believe in 
any such fantastic theory as that the present 
Kaiser is entirely responsible for this progress. 
I am no Pygmalion that I can make an Em- 
peror by breathing prayers before pages of 
statistics. 

It is only fair, however, in any sketch of the 
Emperor to give this skeleton outline of what 
has taken place in the empire over which he 
rules, and which, in certain quarters, it is said, 
lie menaces by his predilection for war. These 
few figures spell peace, they do not spell war, 
and the ruler who has some 700,000 armed men 
ai his hack, and a navy I lie second in strength 
in []\c world guardini;" his shores, and a incr- 
eaiilile marine earr\iiiir his trade wliicli is hard 



126 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

on the heels of Great Britain as a rival, but who 
has none the less kept his country at peace with 
the world for twenty-five years, may be cred- 
ited at least with good intentions. 

It may be said in answer to this same argu- 
ment that this building and training and en- 
riching of a nation are a threat in themselves. 
True, a strong man is more dangerous than a 
weak one; but it is equally true that a strong 
man is a greater safeguard than a weak one 
where the question of peace is at stake. It is 
also true that a rich and powerful man must 
needs take more precautions against attack and 
robbery than a tramp. A tramp seldom carries 
even a bunch of keys, and pays no premium on 
fire, accident, or burglary insurance. 

William the Second knows his history as well 
as any of his people, and incomparably better 
than his English, French, or American critics. 
He knows that only twenty years after the 
death of Frederick the Great, the Prussian power 
went down before Napoleon like a house of 
cards, and that the country's humiliation was 
stamped in bold outlines when Napoleon was 
received in Berlin with the ringing of bells, the 
firing of cannons, and he himself greeted as a 
savior and a benefactor. That was only a hun- 
dred years ago. Is it an indiscretion, then, 



THE INDISCREET 127 

wlicn tlic present ruler, speaking at Branden- 
l)iirg the 5th of Miireh, 1890, says: "I look 
upon the people and nation handed on to me as 
a responsibility conferred upon me by God, and 
that it is, as is written in the Bible, my duty to 
increase this heritage, for which one day I shall 
be called upon to give an account; those who 
try to interfere with my task, I shall crush"? 

On his accession to the throne his first two 
proclamations were to the army and the navy, 
his third to the people. On the 14th of July, 
1888, he reviewed the fleet at Kiel, and for the 
first time an Emperor of Germany and King of 
Prussia appeared there in the uniform of an 
admiral. In April, 1897, Queen Victoria cele- 
brated the sixtieth year of her reign, and Prince 
Henry represented Germany, appearing as ad- 
miral of the fleet in an old battle-ship, the King 
JJlIIiam. On the 24th of April the Emperor 
telegraphed to his brother: *'I regret exceed- 
ingly that I cannot put at your disposition for 
this celebration a better ship, especially when 
all other countries are appearing with their 
finest ships of war. It is a sad consequence of 
the manoeuvring of those unpatriotic persons 
who have obstructed the construction of even 
the most necessary war-ships. But I shall know 
no rest till I have placed our navy on a par for 



128 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

strength with our army." From that day to 
this he has gone steadily forward demanding of 
his people a strong army and a powerful fleet. 
He now has both. He has pulled Germany out 
of danger and beyond the reach, for the moment 
at least, of any repetition of the catastrophe 
and humiliation of a hundred years ago. This 
is a solid fact, and for this situation the Em- 
peror is largely, one might almost say wholly, 
responsible. 

One hears and one reads criticisms of the 
Emperor's habit of speaking and writing of 
"my navy." It is said that the other states of 
Germany have borne taxation to build the fleet, 
and that it is no more the Emperor's than that 
of the King of Bavaria, or of Wtirtemberg, or of 
Saxony. This is the petty, pin-pricking bab- 
ble of boarding-school girls, or of those oflicial 
supernumeraries who have turned sour in their 
retirement. Even the honest democrat is made 
indignant. If the German navy is not the 
work of William the Second, then its parentage 
is far to seek; and if the German navy is not 
proud to be called *'my navy," it is wofuUy 
lacking in gratitude to its creator. 

No man who looks back over his own career, 
say of twenty-five years, but is both chastened 
and amused. He is chastened by the unfore- 



THE INDISCREET 129 

seen dangers lliaL lie has cscapc(l; he is aiiiusrd 
by the certificates of failure, and the prophecies 
of disaster, that always everywhere accompany 
the man who takes part in the game in prefer- 
ence to sitting in the reserved seats, or peeking 
through a hole in the fence. I have not been 
honored with any such intimate association with 
the German Emperor as would enable me to say 
whether he has a highly developed sense of 
humor or not. I can only say for myself, that 
if I had lived through his Majesty's last twenty- 
five years, I should need no other fillip to diges- 
tion than my chuckles over the prophecies of 
my enemies. 

It has been said of him that he is volatile; 
that he flics from one task to another, finishing 
nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extrava- 
gant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity 
as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of 
the stage; that his indiscretions would bring 
about the discharge of the most inconspicuous 
petty official. Others speak and write of him 
as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a 
dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions 
of mediicval knighthood; while others, again, 
dul) liini a modernist, insist that he is a com- 
mercial traveller, liawking llie wares of his coun- 
try wliere\'er he goes, and with an eye ever to 



130 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the interests of Bremen and Hamburg and Essen 
and Pforzheim. Again, you hear that he is a 
Prussian junker, or that he is a cavalry officer, 
with all the prejudices and limitations of such 
a one; while, on the other hand, he is chided 
for enlisting the financial help of rich Jews and 
industrials. He is versatile, but versatility is a 
virtue so long as it does not extend to one's 
principles. Every man who has profoundly in- 
fluenced the life of the world, from Moses to 
Lincoln, has been versatile. Carlyle goes so far 
as to say: "I confess, I have no notion of a truly 
great man that could not be all sorts of men." 
He speaks French well enough to address the 
Academie; he speaks English as well as a cul- 
tivated American, and no one speaks it more 
distinctly, more crisply, more trippingly upon 
the tongue, these days; he preaches a capital 
sermon; he is an accomplished binder of books; 
he is a successful and enthusiastic farmer, and 
he is frankly audacious in his loves and hatreds, 
his ambitions and his beliefs. He has, in short, 
no vermin blood in him at any rate. If you 
do not like him, you know why; and if you do, 
you know why as easily. He even knows what 
he believes about woman's suffrage and about 
God, a rare conciseness of thinking in these 
troublous times. 



THE INDISCREET 131 

Tlicrc stands ])cforc you a man apparently as 
sound in mind and in body as any man who treads 
German soil; a man of great vivacity of mind 
and manner, and of wholesome delight in Hving; 
who bears huge responsibilities with good humor, 
and that most unwholesome of all things, un- 
disputed power, with humility. At a banquet 
in Brandenburg the 5th of March, 1890, speak- 
ing of his many voyages, he said: "He who, 
alone at sea, standing on the bridge, with noth- 
ing over him but God's heaven, has communed 
with himself will not mistake the value of such 
voyages. I could wish for many of my country- 
men that they might live through similar hours 
of self -contemplation, where a man takes stock 
of what he has tried to do, and of what he has 
accomplished. Then it is that a man is cured 
of vanity, and we have all of us need of that." 

It is obvious that a man cannot be modest, 
as the above quotation would indicate, and at 
the same time preening with vanity; a Sir 
Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, 
dashing cavalry officer or proud Prussian squire, 
and a I the same time a wary and astute insur- 
ance agent for the empire; a preacher of duly 
and honor, and belief in God, and at the same 
time a political comedian deceiving his rivals 
abroad, and hoodwinking his subjects at home. 

Not a few men, even of sliuiit 1)o\\(M-s of oh- 



132 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

servation and of meagre experience, have noted 
the strange fact that a blank and direct state- 
ment of the truth is very apt to be put down as 
a he; and that a man who frankly expresses his 
beliefs and ambitions, and openly goes about 
his business and his pleasures with no thought 
of concealment, is often regarded as Machiavel- 
lian and deceitful, because a timid and cautious 
world finds it hard to believe that he is really as 
audacious as he appears. 

Even those with the most limited list, of the 
great names of history at their disposal, cannot 
fail to remember that simplicity and directness 
have in the persons of their highest exemplars 
been misunderstood; hunted down like wild 
beasts, burned, crucified, and then, when they 
were well out of the way, crowned and held up 
to humanity as the saviors of the race. We will 
have none of them when authority, faith, truth, 
courage, show us our distorted images in the 
mirror of their lives. Crucify him, crucify him! 
has always been the cry when such a one asserts 
his moral kingship, or his sonship to God, or 
his audacious intention to live his own life; and 
in less tragic fashion, but none the less along 
the same lines, the world tends to pick at, and 
to fray the moral garments of, its leaders still 
to-day. When such a one succeeds through 
sheer simplicity, then that last feeble epitaph 



THE INDISCRI:ET 133 

of mediocrity is applied to liim: "He is lucky," 
because so few people realize that "luck," is 
merely not to be dependent upon luck. 

It is apparent from the quotations I have 
given, and many more of the same tenor are at 
our disposal, that the personality we are study- 
ing has a very definite image of his place in the 
world, of the duties he is called upon to perform, 
of his rights according to his own conception of 
his authority and responsibilities, and of his 
intentions. 

It is equally apparent that he looks upon his- 
tory in quite another way than that usually 
accepted by the modern scientific historian. 
Taine and Green may explain everything, even 
kings and emperors, by the forces of climate, 
environment, and the slow-heaving influence of 
the people. This school of historians will tell 
you how Charlemagne, and Luther, and Crom- 
well, and Napoleon are to be accounted for by 
purely material explanations. 

The German Emperor apparently believes 
that the history of the world and the develop- 
ment of mankind are due to a series of mighty 
factors, mysteriously endowed from on high and 
bearing the names of men, and not infrequently 
the names of emperors and kings. He is con- 
tinually recalliiiu" liis ancestors, [he Gvcixi VAcv- 
tor, Frederick the Great, and William 1, liis 



134 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

grandfather. These men made Prussia and 
Prussia made the German Empire, he declares. 
To the Brandenburg Parhament he says: "It 
is the great merit of my ancestors that they have 
always stood aloof from and above all parties, 
and that they have always succeeded in making 
political parties combine for the weKare of the 
whole people." 

Due to a quality in the German character 
that need not be discussed here, it is true that 
they have been led, and driven, and welded by 
powerful individuals. No Magna Charta, no 
Cromwell, no Declaration of Independence is to 
be found in German history. No vigorous de- 
mand from the people themselves marks their 
progress. You can read all there is of German 
history in the biographies of the Great Elector, 
of Frederick William the First, of Frederick the 
Great, of York, of vom Stein, Hardenberg, 
Sharnhorst, and Bliicher, of Bismarck, William 
I, and the present Emperor. 

What the Kaiser believes of history is true of 
German history. If he asserts himself as he 
does in Germany, it is because two hundred and 
fifty years of German history put him wholly 
and entirely in the right. It is to be presumed 
that what every student of German history may 
see for himself, has not escaped the flexible in- 
telligence of the present Emperor, and that is. 



THE INDISCREET 135 

that only the ciiitocratic kings of Prussia suc- 
ceeded, and that only an autocratic statesman 
succeeded, in bringing the whole country into 
line, by the acknowledgment of the King of Prus- 
sia, and his heirs forever, as German emperors. 

The first so-called indiscretion of the present 
Emperor was magnificent. He dismissed Bis- 
marck two years after he came to the throne. 
If you have ever been the owner of a yacht and 
your sailing-master has grown to be a tyrant, 
and you have taken your courage in your hand 
and bundled him over the side, you have had 
in a microcosmic waj^ the sensations of such an 
experience. 

It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five 
years old, and since 1862 accustomed to undis- 
puted power, demurred to the wish of the Em- 
peror that the other ministers should have access 
to him directly, and not as heretofore only 
through the chancellor. It is said too that the 
matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck, 
had but scanty respect for the mystical view of 
his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor 
everywhere proclaimed. In 189G, the ^20lli of 
February, in speaking of his grandfather, he re- 
fers to him as: "The Emperor AVilliam, that 
personalily which has become for us in some 
sort that of a saint." 



136 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor's 
policy as regards the treatment of, and the 
legislation for, the workingmen. On February 
the 5th, 1890, he writes to Bismarck: "It is the 
duty of the state to regulate the duration and 
conditions of work in such manner that the 
health and the morality of the workingman 
may be preserved, and that his needs may be 
satisfied and his desire for equality before the 
law assured." 

"Now this is the tale of the Council the German 
Kaiser decreed, 

"And the young king said: — *I have found it, 

the road to the rest ye seek: 
The strong shall wait for the weary, and the 

hale shall halt for the weak; 
With the even tramp of an army where no man 

breaks from the line, 
Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the 

bond of brotherhood — sign ! ' 



t J >> 



Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the 
causes, the man whom we have been describing 
was as certain to dismiss Bismarck from office, 
as a bird is certain to fly and not to swim. The 
ruler who at a banquet May the 4th, 1891, pro- 
claimed: "There is only one master of the 
nation: and that is I, and I will not abide any 



THE INDISCREET 137 

other"; and later, on the IGLh of November, in 
an address to recruits said: "I need Christian 
soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Noster. 
The soldier should not have a will of his own, 
but you should all have but one will and that 
is my will; there is but one law for you and 
that is mine." Again, in addressing the recruits 
for the navy on the 5th of March, 1895, he said 
to them: "Just as I, as Emperor and ruler, 
consecrate my life and my strength to the ser- 
vice of the nation, so you are pledged to give 
your lives to me." Such a man could not share 
his rule with Bismarck. 

Bismarck left Berlin amid groans and tears. 
A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath 
the empire. The young Emperor would stumble 
and sway, and fall without this strong guide be- 
side him. jNIen said this was the first sign of 
an imperious will and temper. 

There is an Arab proverb which runs: ""VMien 
God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings." 
The Kaiser was to be given power for his own 
destruction. But what has happened.'^ Abso- 
lutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 
Bismarck was saj'ing to Gerhard Rohlfs, the 
African explorer: "The main tiling is, we neither 
can nor really want to colonize. We shall never 
have a fleet like France. Our artisans and 



138 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

lawyers and time-expired soldiers are no good 
as colonists." If the ideas of William the 
Second were to prevail, it was time that Bis- 
marck went over the side as pilot of the ship of 
state. The Kaiser in appropriate terms re- 
gretted the loss of this tried public servant and 
said: "However, the course remains the same — 
full steam ahead!" 

Three days after the Jameson raid, on the 
3d of January, 1896, the Kaiser telegraphed to 
President Kriiger: "I beg to express to you my 
sincere congratulations that, without help from 
foreign powers, you have succeeded with your 
own people and by your own strength in driv- 
ing out the armed bands which attempted to 
disturb the peace of your country, and in re- 
establishing order and in defending the inde- 
pendence of your people from attacks from 
outside." 

On the 28th of October, 1908, The Daily Tele- 
graph of London published a long interview 
with the Emperor, the gist of which was that 
the British press and people continued to dis- 
trust him, while all the time he was and had 
been the friend of Great Britain. The Emperor 
cited instances of his friendship, declared the 
English were as mad as March hares not to be- 
lieve in him; insisted that by reason of Ger- 



THE INDISCREET 130 

many*s increasing foreign commerce, and on 
account of the growing menace to peace in the 
Pacific Ocean, Germany was determined to have 
an adequate fleet, which perhaps one day even 
Enghmd might be glad to have alongside of her 
own. 

In addition to these two incidents, the Em- 
peror had written a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, 
who was already then a sick man, and probably 
not wholly responsible, in which it was said he 
had offered advice as to the increase of the 
British na\'y. 

I have described these furious indiscretions, 
as they were called at the time, together, 
though they were years apart; for these utter- 
ances, and the constant repetition of his sense 
of responsibihty to God, and not to the people 
he governs, are the heart of this whole conten- 
tion that the German Emperor is indiscreet, is 
indiscreet even to the point of damaging his 
own prestige, and injuring his country's interests 
abroad. 

Of all these so-called indiscretions there is the 
question to ask: Should these things have been 
said? Should these things have been written.^ 
There are several things to be said in answer to 
these questions. I shall treat each one in liini, 
but all these slalonienls told the truth and 



140 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cleared the air. The Kriiger telegram was not 
written by the Emperor, and when the worst 
construction is put upon it, it expressed what? 
It was merely the condemnation of freebooting 
methods, a condemnation, be it said, that it re- 
ceived from many right-minded and sincerely 
patriotic Englishmen, a condemnation too that 
was re-echoed from America. Only the hon- 
orable and winning personality of one of the 
most patriotic and charming men in England, 
Sir Starr Jameson, saved the raid from looking 
like piracy. A brave man spoke his mind about 
it, and he happened to be in a position so con- 
spicuous that the rumble of his words was 
heard afar. 

So far as Tlie Daily Telegraph interview is 
concerned, the secret history of the incident has 
never been fully divulged. One may say, how- 
ever, without fear of contradiction that the 
importance of the matter was unduly magni- 
fied, by those, both at home and abroad, who 
had something to gain by exaggeration. It is 
admitted on all sides by those best informed 
that at any rate the Emperor was neither re- 
sponsible for the publication, a point to be kept 
in mind, nor for the choice of expressions used 
in the interview. 

The letter to Lord Tweedmouth was a friendly 



THE INDISCREET 141 

communication dealing with the conditions of 
the British and German fleets in the past and 
present, and without a word in it that might 
not have been pubhshed in The Times. It was 
quite innocent of the sinister significance placed 
upon it by those who had not seen it; and the 
British Ministry declined to publish it for en- 
tirely different reasons, reasons in no way con- 
nected with the German Emperor. 

As we read The Daily Telegraph interview 
to-day, it is a plain document. Every word of 
it is true. The moment one looks at it from 
the point of view, that the Emperor of Germany 
is sincerely desirous of an amiable understand- 
ing with England, and that he is, for the peace 
and quiet of the world, working toward that 
end, there is no adverse criticism to be passed 
upon it. The English are thoroughly and com- 
pletely mistaken about the attitude of the 
German Emperor toward them. He is far and 
away the best and most powerful friend they 
have in Europe, and I, for one, would be willing 
to forgive him were he irritated at their mis- 
understanding of him. Personally, I have not 
the shadow of a doubt that had France or 
Russia treated the German Emperor with the 
cool distrust shown liim !)>■ tlii' Brilisli, the Ger- 
man armv and fleet would have moved ere this. 



142 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

To those who know the Britisher he is for- 
given for those luxuries of insular stupidity 
which punctuate his history. I know what a 
fine fellow he is, and I pass them by. Mr. 
Churchill speaks of the German fleet as a 
"luxury"; but this is only one of those cold- 
storage impromptus that a reputation for clev- 
erness must keep on hand, and when Lord 
Haldane in a clumsy attempt to praise the 
German Emperor speaks of him as "half Eng- 
lish" I laugh, as one laughs at the story of fat 
Gibbon kneeling to propose to a lady and re- 
quiring a servant to get him on his legs again. 
British courting often needs a lackey to keep it 
on its legs. 

Could anything be more burningly irritable 
to the Germans than those two unnecessary 
statements? For the moment I am dealing 
with the attitude of the Emperor alone. Of 
the tirades of Chamberlain and Woltmann, 
Schmoller, Treitschke, Delbruck, Zorn, and 
other under-exercised professors, one may speak 
elsewhere. They are as unpardonable as the 
yokel rhetoric of our British friends. Of the 
Emperor's insistence upon his friendliness, of his 
outspoken betrayal of his real feelings, of his 
audacious policy of telling the blunt truth, I am, 
alas, no fair judge, for I am too entirely the ad- 



THE INDISCREET 143 

vocatc of keeping us few cats in the })ag as 
possible. If these things had not been said and 
written, it is true lliat lliere would have been 
no tumult; having been said and written, I fail 
to see the slightest indication in the political 
life of either Germany or England to-day that 
they did harm. Certainly, from his own point 
of view of what his position entails, they can 
hardly, as the radicals in Germany claim, be 
considered as unconstitutional or beyond his 
prerogative. 

When the German Emperor says: "I," he 
refers to the authority and responsibility and 
dignity of the German imperial crown. He is 
not magnifying his personal importance; he is 
emphasizing the dignity and importance of 
every German citizen. Let us try to under- 
stand the situation before wc pass judgment! 
Botii German radicalism and German socialism 
are peculiar to Germany, and everywhere mis- 
understood abroad. They both demand things 
(if the government for ilic easement of their 
position, they both demand certain privileges, 
Init they do not seek or want eitlicr authority 
or responsibility. Look at the figures of their 
proportionate increase and compare this with 
Ihcir ;i('hi;il iiidiiciicc in llic Reielistag lo-dny. 
From 18S1 lo l!)ll, here is the j)ereentage of 



144 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

votes cast by the five representative political 
parties : 





1881 


1893 


1911 


The National Liberals 


14.6 

23.2 

23.7 

23.2 

6.1 


12.9 

14.2 

20.4 
19.0 

23.2 


14.0 

13.1 

12.4 
16.3 
34.8 


The Freisinnige and South German 
Volkspartei 

The Conservatives, including the 
Deutsche and Freikonservative . . . 

The Centrum (Catholic party) .... 

The Social Democrats 





If it were thought for a moment in Germany 
that the Socialists could come into real power, 
their vote and the number of their representa- 
tives in the Reichstag would dwindle away in 
one single election. 

The average German is no leader of men, no 
lover of an emergency, no social or political 
colonist, and he would shrink from the initia- 
tive and daring and endurance demanded by a 
real political revolution and a real change of 
authority, as a hen from water. The very 
quality in his ruler that we take for granted he 
must dislike is the quality that at the bottom 
of his heart he adores, and he reposes upon it 
as the very foundation of his sense of security, 
and as the very bulwark behind which he makes 
grimaces and shakes his fist at his enemies. 
Such men as the present chancellor, von Beth- 



THE INDISCREET 145 

mann-IIolhvcg, a very calm spectator of his 
country's doings, and the Emperor himself, 
both know this. 

As he looks at history and at life, it follows 
that he must be interested in everything that 
concerns his people, and not infrequently take 
a hand in settling questions, or in pushing en- 
terprises, that seem too widely apart to be dealt 
with by one man, and too far afield for his con- 
stitutional obligations to profit by his interfer- 
ence. Certainly German progress shows that 
the Germans can have no ground to quote: 
"Quicquid dehrant reges, plectuntur Achivi," 
of their Emperor. 

In the discussion of this question, I may re- 
mind my American readers, although the Ger- 
man constitution is dealt with elsewhere, that 
there is one difference between Germany and 
America politically, that must never be left out 
of our calculations. Such constitution and such 
rights as the German citizens have, were granted 
them by their rulers. The people of Prussia, 
or of Bavaria, or of Wiirtemberg, have not 
given certain powers to, and placed certain 
limitations upon, their rulers; on the contrary, 
their rulers have given the people certain of 
their own prerogatives and political privileges, 
and granted to the people as a favor, a certain 



146 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

share in government and certain powers, that 
only so long as seventy years ago belonged to 
the sovereign alone. It is not what the people 
have won and then shared with the ruler, but 
it is what the ruler has inherited or won and 
shared with the people, that makes the ground- 
work of the constitutions of the various states, 
and of the empire of Germany. Nothing has 
been taken away from the people of Prussia or 
from any other state in Germany that they once 
had; but certain rights and privileges have 
been granted by the rulers that were once 
wholly theirs. Bear this in mind, that it is 
William II and his ancestors who made Prussia 
Prussia, and voluntarily gave Prussians certain 
political rights, and not the citizens of Prussia 
who stormed the battlements of equal rights 
and made a treaty with their sovereign. 

The King of Prussia is the largest landholder 
and the richest citizen of Prussia. We have 
seen what he expects of his navy and of his 
army. Speaking on the 6th of September, 
1894, he says: "Gentlemen, opposition on the 
part of the Prussian nobility to their King is a 
monstrosity." 

But arid details are not history, and in this 
connection let us have done with them. I have 
documented this chapter with dates and quota- 



THE INDISCREET 147 

tions because the situation politically, is so far 
away from the experience or knowledge of the 
American, that he must be given certain facts 
to assist his imagination in making a true pict- 
ure. I have done this, too, that the Kaiser may 
have his real background when we undertake 
to place him understandingly in the modern 
world. Here we have patriarchal rule still 
strong and still undoubting, coupled with the 
most successful social legislation, the most suc- 
cessful state control of railways, mines, and 
other enterprises ; and a progress commercial and 
industrial during the last quarter of a century, 
second to none. 

This ruler believes it to be essentially a part 
of his business to be a Lorenzo de Medici to his 
people in art; their high priest in religion; their 
envoy extraordinary to foreign peoples; their 
watchful father and friend in legislation dealing 
with their daily lives; their war-lord, and their 
best example in all that concerns domestic hap- 
piness and patriotic citizenship. He fulfils the 
words of the old German chronicle which reads: 
''^Nlerito a nobis nostris(|ue posteris pater patriae 
appelatur quia erat egregius defensor et fortis- 
simus propugnator nihili pendens vilam suam 
con Ira omnia ad versa propter justitiam op- 
ponere." 



148 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

If history is not altogether valueless in its 
description of symptoms, the Germans are of a 
softer mould than some of us, more malleable, 
rather tempted to imitate than led by self- 
confidence to trust to their own ideals, and less 
hard in confronting the demands of other peo- 
ples, that they should accept absorption by 
them. 

Spurned and disdained by Louis XIV, they 
fawned upon him, built palaces like his, dressed 
like his courtiers, wrote and spoke his language, 
copied his literary models, and even bored them- 
selves with mistresses because this was the fash- 
ion at Versailles. He stole from them, only to 
be thrown the kisses of flattery in return. He 
sneered at them, only to be begged for his favors 
in return. He took their cities in time of peace, 
and they acknowledged the theft by a smirking 
adulation that he allowed one of their number 
to be crowned a king. 

As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged 
autopsy upon the Germans. They were dis- 
membered^ or joined together as suited his 
plans. At his beck they fought against one an- 
other, or against Russia, or against England. 
He tossed them crowns, that they still wear 
proudly, as a master tosses biscuits to obedient 
spaniels. He put his poor relatives to rule over 



THE INDISCREET 149 

them, here and there, and they were grateful. 
He marched into their present capital, took 
away their monuments, and the sword of Fred- 
erick the Great, and they hailed him with tears 
and rejoicing as their benefactor, while their 
wittiest poet and sweetest singer, lauded him 
to the skies. 

It is unpleasant to recall, but quite unfair to 
forget, these happenings of the last two hundred 
years in the history of the German people. 
What would any man say, after this, was their 
greatest need, if not self-confidence; if not 
twenty-five years of peace to enable them to 
recover from their beatings and humiliation; 
if not a powerful army and navy to give them 
the sense of security, by which alone prosperity 
and pride in their accomplishments and in 
themselves can be fostered; if not a ruler who 
holds ever before their eyes their ideals and the 
unfaltering energy required of them to attain 
them ! 

AYhat nation would not be self-conscious after 
siK'li dire experiences.^ "\Muit nation would not 
be tenderly sensitive as to its treatment by 
neighboring powers? What nation would not 
be even unduly keen to resent any aj)p(\irance 
of an alt('ni})t to josll(> it from its liard-won 
place ill I lie Sim? TluMr self-consciousness and 



150 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

sensitiveness and vanity are patent, but they 
are pardonable. As the leader of the Conserva- 
tive party in the Reichstag, Doctor von Heyde- 
brandt, speaking at Breslau in October, 1911, 
anent the Morocco controversy, said, after al- 
luding to the "bellicose impudence" of Lloyd- 
George: *'The [British] ministry thrusts its fist 
under our nose, and declares,' I alone command 
the world. It is bitterly hard for us who have 
1870 behind us." They feel that they should 
no longer be treated to such bumptiousness. 

I trust that I am no swashbuckler, but I have 
the greatest sympathy with the present Em- 
peror in his capacity as war-lord, and in his insis- 
tent stiffening of Germany's martial backbone. 

When shall we all recover from a certain in- 
ternational sickliness that keeps us all feverish? 
The continual talk and writing about interna- 
tional friendships, being of the same family, or 
the same race, the cousin propagandism in 
short, is irritating, not helpful. I do not go to 
Germany to discover how American is Germany, 
nor to England to discover how American is 
England; but to Germany to discover how 
German is Germany, to England to see how 
English is England. I much prefer Americans 
to either Germans or Englishmen, and they pre- 
fer Germans or Englishmen, as the case may be. 



THE INDISCREET 151 

to Americans. What spurious and milksoppy 
puppets we should be if it were not so. So long 
as there are praters going about insisting that 
Germany, with a flaxen pig-tail down her back, 
and England, in pumps instead of l)oots, and a 
poodle instead of a bulldog, shall sit forever in 
the moonlight hand in hand; or that America 
shall become a dandy, shave the chin-whisker, 
wear a Latin Quarter butterfly tie of red, white, 
and blue, and thrum a banjo to a little brown 
lady with oblique eyes and a fan, all day long; 
just so long will the bulldog snarl, the flaxen- 
haired maiden look sulky, the chin-whisker be- 
come stiffer and more provocative, and the 
fluttering fan seem to threaten blows. 

We have been surfeited with peace talk till 
we are all irritable. One hundredth part of an 
ounce of the same quality of peace powders that 
we are using internationally would, if prescribed 
to a happy family in this or any other land, 
lead to dissensions, disobedience, domestic dis- 
aster, and divorce. Mr. Carnegie will have 
lived long enough to see more wars and inter- 
national disturbances, and more discontent born 
of superficial reading, than any man in history 
who was at the same time so closely connected 
with their origin. Perhaps it were better after 
all if our millionaires were educated! 



152 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The peace party need war just as the atheists 
need God, otherwise they have nothing to deny, 
nothing to attack. Peace is a negative thing 
that no one really wants, certainly not the kind 
of peace of which there is so much talking 
to-day, which is a kind of castrated patriotism. 
Peace is not that. Peace can never be born of 
such impotency. When German statesmen de- 
clare roundly that they will not discuss the 
question of disarmament, they are merely say- 
ing that they will not be traitors to their coun- 
try. If the Emperor rattles the sabre occasion- 
ally, it is because the time has not come yet, 
when this German people can be allowed to 
forget what they have suffered from foreign 
conquerors, and what they must do to protect 
themselves from such a repetition of history. 

When the final judgment is passed upon the 
Emperor, we must recall his deep religious feel- 
ing that he is inevitably an instrument of God; 
his ingrained and ineradicable method of read- 
ing history as though it were a series of the ipse 
dixits of kings; his complacent neglect of how 
the work of the world is done by patient labor; 
of how works of art are only born of travail and 
tears: his obsession by that curious psychology 
of kings that leads them to believe that they 
are somehow different, and under other laws. 



THE INDISCREET 153 

as though they Hved in another dimension of 
space. In addition, he is a man of unusually 
rapid mental machinery, of overpowering self- 
confidence, of great versatility, of many advan- 
tages of training and experience, and, above all, 
he is unhampered. He is answerable directly 
to no one, to no parliament, to no minister, to 
no people. He is father, guardian, guide, school- 
master, and priest, but in no sense a servant re- 
sponsible to any master save one of his own 
choosing. 

The only wonder is that he is not insupport- 
able. Those who have come under the spell of 
his personality declare him to be the most de- 
lightful of companions; what Germany has 
grown to be under his reign of twenty -five years 
all the world knows, much of the world envies, 
some of the world fears; what his own people 
think of him can best be expressed by the state- 
ment that his supremacy was never more as- 
sured than to-day. 

I agree that no one man can be credited with 
the astonishing expansion of Germany in all 
directions in the last thirty years; but so inter- 
woven are the advice and influence, the ambi- 
tions and plans, of the German Emperor with 
the progress of IIk^ ricnii.in i)eople, that this one 
personality shares his country's successes as no 



154 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

single individual in any other country can be 
said to do. 

Whether he likes Americans or not one can 
hardly know. No doubt he has made many of 
them think so; and, alas, we suffer from a 
national hallucination that we are liked abroad, 
when as a matter of fact we are no more liked 
than others; and in cultured centres we are in 
addition, laughed at by the careless and sneered 
at by the sour. 

That the Kaiser is liked by Americans, both 
by those who have met him and by those who 
have not, is, I think, indisputable. He is of 
the stuff that would have made a first-rate 
American. He would have been a sovereign 
there as he is a sovereign here. He would have 
enjoyed the risks, and turmoil, and competition; 
he would have enjoyed the fine, free field of 
endeavor, and he would have jousted with the 
best of us in our tournament of life, which has 
trained as many knights sans peur et sans 
reproche as any country in the world. 

I believe in a man who takes what he thinks 
belongs to him, and holds it against the world; 
in the man who so loves life that he keeps a 
hearty appetite for it and takes long draughts 
of it; who is ever ready to come back smiling 
for another round with the world, no matter 



THE INDISCREET 155 

how hard he has been punished. I believe that 
God beheves in the man who beheves in Ilim, 
and therefore in himself. Why should I debar 
a man from my sympathy because he is a king 
or an emperor? I admire your courage, Sir; I 
love your indiscretions; I applaud your failh 
in your God, and your confidence in yourself, 
and your splendid service to your country. 
Without you Germany would have remained a 
second-rate power. Had you been what your 
critics pretend that they would like you to be, 
Germany would have been still ruling the 
clouds. 

Here's long life to your power. Sir, and to 
your possessions, and to you! And as an 
Anglo-Saxon, I thank God, that all your coun- 
trymen are not like you! 



IV 

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND 
THE PRESS 

IN the days when Bismarck was welding the 
German states into a federal organization 
and finally into an empire, he used the press 
to spray his opinions, wishes, and suspicions over 
those he wished to instruct or to influence. He 
used it, too, to threaten or to mislead his enemies 
at home and abroad. The Hamburger Nachrich- 
ten was the newspaper for which he wrote at 
one time, and which remained his confidential 
organ, though as his power grew he used other 
journals and journalists as well. 

As Germany has few traditions of freedom, 
having rarely won liberty as a united people, 
but having been beaten into national unity by 
her political giants, or her robuster sovereigns, 
so the press before and during Bismarck's long 
reign, from 1862 to 1890, was kept well in hand 
by those who ruled. It is only lately that 
caricature, criticism, and opposition have had 
freer play. That a journalist like Maximilian 
Harden (a friend and confidant of Bismarck, 

156 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 157 

by the way) should be permitted to write with- 
out rebuke and without punishment that the 
present Kaiser "has all the gifts except one, 
that of politics," marks a new license in journal- 
istic debate. That this same person was able, 
single-handed, to bring about the exposure and 
downfall of a cabal of decadent courtiers whose 
influence with the Emperor was deplored, proves 
again how completely the German press has 
escaped from certain leading-strings. A sharp 
criticism of the Emperor in die Post, even as 
lately as 1911, excited great interest, and was 
looked upon as a very daring performance. 

There are some four thousand daily and more 
than three thousand weekly and monthly pub- 
lications in Germany to-day; but neither the 
press as a whole, nor the journalists, with a few 
exceptions, exert the influence in either society 
or politics of the press in America and in 
England. As compared with Germany, one is 
at once impressed with the greater number of 
journals and their more effective distribution at 
home. In America there are 2,-47l2 daily papers; 
1G,'-2G9 weeklies; and 2,709 monthlies. Tri- 
weekly and quarterly publications added bring 
the total to 22,800. One group of 200 daily 
papers claim a circulation of 10,000,000, while 
five magazines have a total circulation of 



158 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

5,000,000. It is calculated that there is a daily, 
a weekly, and a monthly magazine circulated 
for every single family in America. Not an 
unmixed blessing, by any means, when one re- 
members that thousands, untrained to think 
and uninterested, are thus dusted with the 
widely blown comments of undigested news. 
Editorial comment of any serious value is, of 
course, impossible, and the readers are given a 
strange variety of unwholesome intellectual food 
to gulp down, with mental dyspepsia sure to 
follow, a disease which is already the curse of 
the times in America, where superficiality and 
insincerity are leading the social and political 
dance. 

To carry the comparison further, there are 
22,806 newspapers published in America; 9,500 
in England; 8,049 in Germany; and 6,681 in 
France: or 1 for every 4,100 of the population 
in America; 1 for every 4,700 in Great Britain; 
1 for every 7,800 in Germany, and 1 for every 
5,900 in France. 

That a prime minister should have been a 
contributor to the press, as was Lord Salisbury; 
that a correspondent or editorial writer of a 
newspaper should find his way into cabinet cir- 
cles, into diplomacy, or into high office in the 
colonies; that the editor and owner of a great 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 159 

newspaper should become an ambassador to 
England, as in the case of Mr. Reid, is impos- 
sible in Germany. The character of the men 
who take up the profession of journalism suf- 
fers from the lack of distinction and influence 
of their task. Raymond, Greeley, Dana, Laf- 
fan, Godkin, in America, and Delane, Hutton, 
Lawson, and their successors, Garvin, Strachey, 
Robinson, in England, are impossible products 
of the German journalistic soil at present. 

There have been great changes, and the place 
of the newspaper and the power of the journalist 
is increasing rapidly, but the stale atmosphere of 
censordom hangs about the press even to-day. 
Freedom is too new to have bred many powerful 
pens or personalities, and the inconclusive re- 
sults of political arguments, written for a people 
who are comparatively apathetic, lessen the en- 
thusiasm of the political journalist. There are 
not three editors in Germany who receive as 
much as six thousand dollars a year, and the 
majority are paid from twelve hundred to three 
thousand a year. This does not make for inde- 
pendence. I am no believer in great wealth as 
an incentive to activity, but certainly solvency 
makes for emancipation from the more debasing 
forms of tyranny. 

Several of llie more popular newspapers are 



160 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

owned and controlled by the Jews, and to the 
American, with no inborn or traditional preju- 
dice against the Jews as a race, it is somewhat 
difficult to understand the outspoken and uncon- 
cealed suspicion and dislike of them in Germany. 
There is no need to mince matters in stating 
that this suspicion and dislike exist. A comedy 
called "The Five Frankfurters" has been given 
in all the principal cities during the last year 
and has had a long run in Berlin. It is a scath- 
ing caricature of certain Jewish peculiarities of 
temperament and ambition. 

There is even an anti-semitic party, small 
though it be, in the Reichstag, while the party 
of the Centre, of the Conservatives and the 
Agrarians, is frankly anti-semitic as well. No 
Jew can become an officer in the army, no Jew 
is admitted to one of the German corps in the 
universities, no Jew can hold office of importance 
in the state, and I presume that no unbaptized 
Jew is received at court. I am bound to record 
my personal preference for the English and Amer- 
ican treatment of the Jew. In England they 
have made a Jew their prime minister, and in 
America we offer him equal opportunities with 
other men, and applaud him whole-heartedly 
when he succeeds, and thump him soundly with 
our criticism when he misbehaves. The Ger- 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES IGl 

man fears him; we do not. We have made Jews 
ambassadors, they have served in our army and 
navy, and not a few of them rank among our 
sanest and most generous philanthropists. 

To a certain extent society of the higher and 
official class shuts its doors against him. One 
of the well-known restaurants in Berlin, until 
the death of its founder, not long ago, refused 
admission to Jews. 

I venture to say that no intelligent American 
stops to think whether the Speyer brothers, or 
Kahn, or Schiff, or the members of the house of 
Rothschild, are Jews or not, in estimating their 
political, social, and philanthropic worth. Even 
as long ago as the close of the fourteenth cen- 
tury the great strife between the princes of Ger- 
many and the free cities ceased, in order that 
both might unite to plunder the Jews. 

Luther preached: "Burn their synagogues and 
schools; what will not burn bury with earth that 
neither stone nor rubbish remain." "In like 
manner break into and burn their houses." 
"Forbid their rabbis to teach on pain of life 
and hmb." "Take away all their prayer-books 
and Talmuds, in which are nothing but godless- 
ness, lies, cursing, and swearing." In the tliron- 
icles of the time occurs frequently " Judan occisi, 
combusti." 



162 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The German comes by his disUke of the Jew 
through centuries of traditional conflict, plun- 
der, and hatred, and the very moulder of the 
present German speech, Luther, was a furious 
offender. The Jews have been materialists 
through all ages, claim the Germans: "The Jews 
require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; 
but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a 
stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolish- 
ness." It is to be in our day the battle of battles, 
they claim, whether we are to be socially, mor- 
ally, and politically orientalized by this advance 
guard of the Orient, the Jews, or whether we are 
to preserve our occidental ideals and traditions. 
Many more men see the conflict, they maintain, 
than care to take part in it. The money-mar- 
kets of the world are ramparts that few men 
care to storm, but, if the independent and the 
intelligent do not withstand this semitization of 
our institutions, the ignorant and the degraded 
will one day take the matter into their own 
hands, as they have done before, and as they do 
to this day in some parts of Russia. 

There are 600,000 Jews in Germany, 400,000 
of them in Prussia and 100,000 of these in Ber- 
lin. In New York City alone there are more 
than 900,000. They are always strangers in our 
midst. They are of another race. They have 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 103 

other standards and other allegiances. Perhaps 
we are all of us, the most enlightened of us, 
provincial at l)ottom, we like to know who and 
what our neiglihors are, and whence they came; 
and we dislike those who are outside our racial 
and social experiences, and our moral and re- 
ligious habits, and the Jew is always, every- 
where, a foreigner. At any rate, so the German 
maintains. 

Strange as it may sound in these days, the 
Germans are not at heart business men. There 
are more eyes with dreams in them in Germany 
than in all the w^orld besides. They work hard, 
they increase their factories, their commerce, 
but their hearts are not in it. The Jew has 
amassed an enormous part of the wealth of Ger- 
many, considering his small proportion of the 
total population. The German, because he is 
not at heart a trader, is an easy prey for him. 

These things trouble us in America very little, 
and we smile cynically at the not altogether un- 
truthful portraits of "Potash and Pearlmutter," 
and their vermin-like business methods. There 
is ail undercurreiil of feeling in America, that the 
virile blood is still there whicli will stop at nothing 
to throw off ()i)pr(\ssioii, whether from the Jew 
or from any one else. If we are pinched too hard 
financially, if confiscation by the government or 



164 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

by individuals goes too far, no laws even will 
restrain the violence which will break out for 
liberty. So we are at peace with ourselves and 
with others, trusting in that quiet might which 
will take governing into its own hands, at all 
hazards, if the state of affairs demands it. 

With the Germans it is different. No people 
of modern times has been so harried and har- 
rowed as these Germans. The Thirty Years' 
war left them in such fear and poverty that even 
cannibalism existed, and this was years after 
Massachusetts and Maryland were settled. 
But nothing has tarnished their idealism. 
Whether as followers of Charlemagne, or as 
hordes of dreamers seeking to save Christ's 
tomb and cradle in the Crusades, or as intoxi- 
cated barbarians insisting that their emperor 
must be crowned at Rome, or as the real torch- 
bearers of the Reformation, or even now as 
dreamers, philosophers, musicians, and only in- 
dustrial and commercial by force of circum- 
stances, they are, least of all the peoples, mate- 
rialists. 

They have given the world lyric poetry, 
music, mythology, philosophy, and these are still 
their souls' darlings. They entered the modern 
world just as science began to marry with com- 
merce and industry, and so their unworn, fresh. 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 165 

and youthful intellectual vigor found expression 
in industry. Renan writes that he owes liis 
pleasure in intellectual things to a long ances- 
try of non-thinkers, and he claims to have in- 
herited tlicir storcd-up mental forces. Germany 
is not unlike that. Her recent industrial and 
intellectual activity may be the release from 
bondage, of the centuries of stored-up intellect- 
ual energy from the "Woods of Germany." 

It is true that they are easily governed and 
amenable, but this is due not wholly to the fact 
that they have been so long under the yoke of 
rulers, or because they are of cow-like disposi- 
tion, but because their ideals are spiritual, not 
material. The American seeks wealth, the Eng- 
lishman power, the Frenchman notoriety, the 
German is satisfied with peaceful enjoyment of 
music, poetry, art, and friendly and very simple 
intercourse with his fellows. 

Certainly I am not the man to say he is 
wrong, when I see how spiritual things in my 
own country are cut out of the social body as 
though they were annoying and dangerous ap- 
pendices. 

The German of this type looks down upon the 
spiritual aiul intcllccl ual development of other 
countries as far inferior to his own. Such an 
oiH' in talkinir to an Enulisliman feels that he is 



166 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

conversing with a high-spirited, thoroughbred 
horse; to a Erenchman, as though he were a 
cynical monkey; to an American, as though he 
were a bright youth of sixteen. 

The German considers his deahngs with the 
intangible things of life to be a higher form, in- 
deed the highest form, of intellectual employ- 
ment. He is therefore racially, historically, and 
by temperament jealous or contemptuous, ac- 
cording to his station in life, of the cosmopolitan 
exchanger of the world, the Jew. He denies to 
him either patriotism or originality, and looks 
upon him as merely a distributer, whether in 
art, literature, or commerce, as an exchanger 
who amasses wealth by taking toll of other men's 
labor, industry, and intellect. It has not escaped 
the German of this temper, that the whirling 
gossip and innuendoes that have lately annoyed 
the present party in power in England, have had 
to do with three names: Isaacs, Samuels, and 
Montagu, all Jews and members of the govern- 
ment. 

German politics, German social life, and the 
German press cannot be understood without this 
explanation. The German sees a danger to his 
hardly won national life in the cosmopolitanism 
of the Jew; he sees a danger to his duty-doing, 
simple-living, and hard-working governing aris- 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 107 

tocracy in the tempting luxury of the recently 
rich Jew; and besides these objective reasons, he 
is instinctively antagonistic, as though he wore 
born of the clouds of heaven and the Jew of the 
clods of earth. This does not mean that the 
German is a believer, in the orthodox sense of 
the word, for that he is not. He loves the 
things of the mind not because he thinks of 
them as of divine creation, and as showing an 
allegiance to a divine Creator, but because they 
are the playthings of his own manufacture that 
amuse him most. His superiority to other na- 
tions is that he claims to enjoy maturer toys. 
Not even France is so entirely unencumbered by 
orthodox restraints in matters of belief. 

So far, therefore, as the German press is Jew- 
controlled, it is suspected as being not German 
politically, domestically, or spiritually; as not 
being representative, in short. It should be 
added that, though this is the attitude of the 
great majority in Germany, there is a small class 
who recognize the pioneer work that the Jew has 
done. Few men are more respected there, and 
few have more influence than such men as 
Ballin and Rathenau and others. For the very 
reason that the German is an idealist the Jew 
has been of inconii)aral)le value to him in the 
development of his industrial, commercial, and 
financial atl'airs. Not only as a scientific finan- 



168 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cier has he helped, not only has he provided 
ammunition when German industrial undertak- 
ings were weak and stumbling, but along the 
lines of scientific research, as chemists, physi- 
cists, artists — perhaps no one stands higher 
than the Jew Liebermann as a painter — the 
Jew has done yeoman service to the country in 
return for the high wages that he has taken. 
There are Germans who recognize this, and 
there are in the Jewish world not a few men to 
whom the doors of enlightened society are al- 
ways open. 

Whatever one may feel of instinctive dislike, 
the open-minded observers of the historical prog- 
ress of Germany, all recognize that Germany 
would not be in the foremost place she now occu- 
pies in the competitive markets of the world, if 
she had not had the patriotic, intelligent, and 
skilful backing of her better-class Jewish citizens. 

Printing was born in Germany, and the town 
of Augsburg had a newspaper as early as 1505, 
while Berlin had a newspaper in 1617 and Ham- 
burg in 1628. Every foreigner who knows Ger- 
many at all, knows the names of the Kolnisclie 
Zeitujigy the Lokal Anzeiger and Der Tag, Ham- 
burger N aclirichten, Berliner Tageblatt, Frank- 
furter Zeitung, and the Norddeutsche Allgemeine 
Zeitung, this last the official organ of the foreign 
office. The Neue Preussische Zeitung, better 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 100 

known by its briefer title of Kreuz Zeitung, is a 
stanch conservative organ, and for years has pub- 
Hshed the scholarly comments once a week of Pro- 
fessor Shicmann, who is a political historian of 
distinction, and a trusted friend of the Emperor. 
The Deutsche Tagcszeitung is the organ of the 
Agrarian League. The Reichsbote is a conserva- 
tive journal and the organ of the orthodox party 
in the state church. Vorivdrts is the organ of 
the socialists and, whatever one may think of its 
politics, one of the best-edited, as it is one of the 
best-written, newspapers in Germany. The Zu- 
kunft, a weekly publication, is the personal organ 
of Harden, is Harden, in fact. The Zukunft in 
normal years sells some 22,000 copies at 20 
marks, giving an income of 440,000 marks; this 
with the advertisements gives an income of say 
500,000 marks. The expenses are about 350,000 
marks, leaving a net income to this daring and 
accomplished journalist of 150,000 marks a year. 
In Germany such an income is great wealth. 
The Zukiuift and its success is a commentary of 
value upon the appreciation of, as well as the 
rarity of, independent journalism in Germany. 

The Vossische Zeitung, or "Aunty Voss" as it 
is nicknamed, is a solid, bourgeois sheet and mod- 
erately radical in tone. It is proper, wipes its 
feet before entering the house, and may be safely 
left in the servants' hall or in the school-room. 



170 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Die Post represents the conservative party polit- 
ically, is welcome in rich industrial circles, and 
is rather liberal in religious matters, though hos- 
tile to the government in matters of foreign pol- 
itics, and of less influence at home than the fre- 
quent quotations from it in the British press 
would lead one to suppose. The two official orr 
gans of the Catholics are the Germania and the 
Volks Zcitimg, of Cologne, whose editor is the 
well-known Julius Bachern. The Lokal Anzcigcr 
and the Tagcblatt of Berlin attempt, with no 
small degree of success, American methods, and 
give out several editions a day with particular 
reference to the latest news. 

Leipsic, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Stras- 
burg, Dresden, Xonigsberg, Breslau, with its 
Schlcssischc Zeitung, and the Rhine provinces 
and the steel and iron industries represented by 
the Rheinisch-WcsffdUschcr Zeitung, and other 
cities and towns have local newspapers. A good 
example of such little-known provincial news- 
papers is the Augshurgcr Abcndzeihing, with its 
first-rate reports of the parliamentary proceed- 
ings in Bavaria and its well-edited columns. 
The circulation of these journals is, from our 
point of view, small. The Berliner Tageblatt in a 
recent issue declares its paid circulation to have 
been 73,000 in 1901; 106,000 in 1905; 190,000 in 
1910; and !208,000 in 1911. 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 171 

The custom ill Germany of eating in restau- 
rants, of taking coffee in the cafes, of writing 
one's letters and reading the newspapers there, 
no dou])t has much to do with the small subscrip- 
tion lists of German journals of all kinds, whether 
daily, weekly, or monthly. The German econ- 
omizes even in these small matters. A German 
family, or small cafe or restaurant, may, for a 
small sum, have half a dozen or more weekly 
and monthly journals left, and changed each 
week; thus they are circulated in a dozen places 
at the expense of only one copy. Where a family 
of similar standing in America takes in regularly 
two morning papers and an evening paper, sev- 
eral weekly and monthly, and perhaps one or two 
foreign journals, the German family may take 
one morning paper. The custom of having half 
a dozen newspapers served with the morning 
meal, as is done in the larger houses in America 
and in England, is practically unknown. Econ- 
omj' is one reason, indifference is another, pro- 
vincial and circumscribed interests are others. 

The German has not our keen appetite for 
what we call news, which is often merely sur- 
mises in bigger type. Only the very small num- 
ber who have travelled and made interests and 
friends for themselves oul of llicir own country, 
have any feeling of curiosity even, about the 
political and social tides and currents elsewhere. 



172 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

An astounding number of Germans know Soph- 
ocles, -^schylus, and Shakespeare better than we 
do, but they know nothing, and care nothing, for 
the sizzKng, crackHng stream of purposeless inci- 
dent, and sterile comment, that pours in upon the 
readers of American newspapers, and which has 
had its part in making us the largest consumers 
of nerve-quieting drugs in the world. All too 
many of the pens that supply our press are with- 
out education, without experience, without re- 
sponsibility or restraint. What Mommsen writes 
of Cicero applies to them: "Cicero was a jour- 
nalist in the worst sense of the term, oVer-rich 
in words as he himself confesses, and beyond 
all imagination poor in thought." 

No one of these journals pretends to such 
power or such influence as certain great dailies 
in America and in England. They have not 
the means at their command to buy much cable 
or telegraphic news, and lacking a press tariff 
for telegrams, they are the more hampered. 
The German temperament, and the civil-service 
and political close-corporation methods, make it 
difficult for the journalist to go far, either so- 
cially or politically. The German has been 
trained in a severe school to seek knowledge, not 
to look for news, and he does not make the same 
demands, therefore, upon his newspaper. 

German relations with the outside world are 



GERMAN POLITIC AL PARTIES 173 

of an industrial and commercial kind, and iiiilil 
very lately the German has not been a traveller, 
and is not now an explorer, and their colonies are 
unimportant; consequently there is no very keen 
interest on the part of the bulk of the people in 
foreign affairs. Even Sir Edward Grey's an- 
swering speech on the Morocco question did not 
appear in full in Berlin until the following day, 
though Germany had roused itself to an unusual 
pitch of excitement and expectancy. 

As the Germans are not yet political animals, 
so their newspapers reflect an artificial political 
enthusiasm. Society, too, is as little organized 
as politics. There are no great figures in their 
social world. A Beau Brummel, a d'Orsay, a 
Lady Palmerston, a Lady Londonderry, a Duke 
of Devonshire, a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a Rose- 
bery, would be impossible in Germany, espe- 
cially if they were in opposition to the party in 
power. When a chancellor or other minister is 
dismissed by the Kaiser, he simply disappears. 
He does not add to the weight of the opposition, 
but ceases to exist politically. This has two bad 
results: it does not strengthen the criticism of 
the adnilnislralion, and il makes [he office-holder 
viry loalli to leave oflice, and to surrcnider his 
})()wer. An ex-cabinet olHcer in America or in 
England remains a vahiai)le critic, but an ex- 



174 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

chancellor in Germany becomes a social recluse, 
a political Trappist. Even the leading political 
figures are after all merely shadowy servants of 
the Emperor. They represent neither themselves 
nor the people, and such subserviency kills inde- 
pendence and leaves us with mediocrities ges- 
ticulating in the dark, and making phrases in a 
vacuum. 

There are, it is true, charming hostesses in 
Berlin, and ladies who gather in their drawing- 
rooms all that is most interesting in the intel- 
lectual and political life of the day; but they are 
almost without exception obedient to the tra- 
ditional officialdom, leaning upon a favor that 
is at times erratic, and without the daring of 
independence which is the salt of all real per- 
sonality. 

There are, too, country-houses. One castle in 
Bavaria, how well I remember it, and the accom- 
plished charm of its owner, who had made its 
grandeur cosey, a feat, indeed! But all this is 
detached from the real life of the nation, which 
is forever taking its cue from the court, leaving 
any independent or imposing social and political 
life benumbed and without vitality. There is no 
free and stalwart opposition, no centres of power; 
and much as one tires of the incessant and fever- 
ish strife political and social at home, one returns 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 175 

to it taking a long breath of tlio free air after 
this hot-house atmosphere, where tlie ther- 
mometer is regulated by the wishes of an auto- 
crat. 

The press necessarily reflects these conditions. 
The Social Democrats, divided into many small 
parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes, 
divided as well, give the press no single point of 
leverage. These political parties wrangle among 
themselves over the dish of votes, but what is 
put into the dish comes from a master over whom 
they have no control. If they upset the dish 
they are turned out as they were in 1878, 1887, 
1893, and 1907, and when they return they are 
better behaved. 

The parties themselves are not real, since thou- 
sands of voters lean to the left merely to express 
their discontent; but they would desert the So- 
cial Democrats at once did they think there was 
a chance of real governing power for them. A 
small industrial was warned of the a^^'ful things 
that would happen did the Socialists come into 
power. "Ah," he replied, "but the government 
would not permit that!" What has the press to 
chronicle with insistence and with dignity of such 
flabby political and social conditions? 

The press may 1)(\ and often is, annoying, as 
mosquitoes are annoying, but its campaigns are 
dani^erous to no])odv. As I write, it is hard to 



176 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

believe that within a few days the members of a 
new Reichstag are to be elected. There are po- 
litical meetings, it is true, there are articles and 
editorials in the newspapers, there is some lan- 
guid discussion at dinner-tables and in society, 
but there is a sense of unreality about it all, as 
though men were thinking : Nothing of grave im- 
portance can happen in any case! We shall 
have something to say farther on of political 
Germany; here it sufl&ces to say that the press 
of Germany betrays in its political writing that 
it is dealing with shadows, not with realities. 
"They have been at a great feast of language, 
and stolen the scraps," that's all. 

The snarling F anther that was sent to Agadir, 
teeth and claws showing, came back looking like 
an adventurous tomcat that wished only to hide 
itself meekly in its accustomed haunts; and its 
unobtrusive bearing seemed to say, the less said 
about the matter the better. What a storm of 
obloquy would have burst upon such inept di- 
plomacy in America, or in England, or even in 
France. Not so here. Everybody was sore and 
sorry, but the newspapers and the journalists 
could raise no protest that counted. It is all 
explained by the fact that the people do not 
govern, have nothing to do with the whip or 
the reins, nor have they any constitutional way 
of changing coachmen, or of getting possession 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 177 

of whip and reins; and hooting at the driver, and 
jeering at the tangled whip-lash and awkwardly 
held reins, is poor-spirited business. Only one 
politieal writer, Harden, does it with any effeet, 
and his pen is said to have upset the Caprivi 
government. 

As one reads the newspapers day by day, and 
the weekly and monthly journals, it becomes ap- 
parent that the German imagines he has done 
something when he has had an idea; just as the 
Frenchman imagines he has done something 
when he has made an epigram. We are less 
given either to thinking or phrasing, and far less 
gifted in these directions than either Germans or 
Frenchmen, and perhaps that is the reason w^e 
have actually done so much more politically. 
We do things for lack of something better to do, 
while our neighbors find real pleasure in their 
dreams, and take great pride in their epigrams. 

As all great writing, from that of Xenophon 
and Caesar till now, is l)orn of action or the love 
of it, or as a spiritual incitement to action, so a 
people with little opportunity for political action, 
and no centres of social life witli a real sway or 
sovereignty, cannot create or offer substance for 
th«^ making of a powerful and independent j)ress. 

There is no New York, no Paris, no London, 
no Vienna even, in Germany. Berlin is the capi- 



178 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

tal, but it is not a capital by political or social 
evolution, but by force of circumstances. Ger- 
many has many centres which are not only not 
interested in Berlin, but even antagonistic. 
Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Leipsic, Frankfort, 
Dresden, Breslau, and besides these, twenty-six 
separate states with their capitals, their rulers, 
courts, and parliaments, go to make up Ger- 
many, and perhaps you are least of all in Ger- 
many when you are in Berlin. It is true that 
we have many States, many capitals, and many 
governors in America, but they have all grown 
from one, and not, as in Germany, been beaten 
into one, and held together more from a sense 
of danger from the outside than from any inter- 
est, sympathy, and liking for one another. 

With us each State, too, has a powerful rep- 
resentation both in the Senate and in the House 
of Representatives, which keeps the interest 
alive, while in Germany Prussia is overwhelm- 
ingly preponderant. In the upper house, or 
Bundesraty Prussia has 17 representatives; next 
comes Bavaria with 6 ; and the other states with 
4 or less, out of a total of 58 members. In the 
Reichstag, out of a total of 397 representatives, 
Prussia has 236. 

Political society is not all centred in Berlin, as 
it is in London, Paris, or Washington, nor is social 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 179 

life there representative of all Germany. Ber- 
lin's stamp of approval is not necessary to play, 
or opera, or book, or picture, or statue, or per- 
sonality. Indeed, Berlin often takes a lead in 
such matters from other cities in Germany where 
the artistic life and history are more fully de- 
veloped, as, for instance, in other days, Wei- 
mar, and now Munich, Dresden, and, in literary 
matters, Leipsic. A recent example of this, 
though of small consequence in itself, is the case 
of the opera, the "Rosen Kavalier," which was 
given repeatedly in Dresden and Leipsic, whither 
many Berlin people went to hear it, before the 
authorities in Berlin could be persuaded to pro- 
duce it. 

The nobility, the society heavy artillery, come 
to Berlin only for three or four weeks, from the 
middle of January to the middle of February, to 
pay their respects to their sovereign at the vari- 
ous court functions given during that time. 
They live in the country and only visit in Berlin. 
It is complained, that the double taxation inci- 
dent to the up-keep of an establishment both in 
town and in the country, makes it impossible for 
them to be much in Berlin. They stay in hotels 
and in apartments, and are mere passing visitors 
ill llieir own capital. They have, therefore, 
prac'lically no inliucnce upon social life, and Bcr- 



180 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

lin is merely the centre of the industrial, military, 
oflScial, and political society of Prussia. It is the 
clearing-house of Germany, but by no means the 
literary, artistic, social, or even the political capi- 
tal of Germany, as London is the English, or 
Paris the French, or as Washington is fast grow- 
ing to be the American, capital. 

There is no training-ground for an accom- 
plished or man-of- the- world journalist, and the 
views and opinions of a journalist who is more 
or less of a social pariah, and he still is that with 
less than half a dozen exceptions, and of a man 
who begs for crumbs from the press officials at 
the foreign or other government offices, are 
neither written with the grip of the independent 
and dignified chronicler, nor received with confi- 
dence and respect by the reader. 

It may be a reaction from this negligence with 
which they are treated that produces a quality, 
both in the writing and in the illustrations of the 
German newspapers, which is unknown in Amer- 
ica. Many of the illustrated papers indulge in 
pictorial flings which may be compared only to 
the scribbling and coarse drawings, in out-of- 
the-way places, of dirty-minded boys. With the 
exception of the well-known Fliegende Blatter^ 
Kladderadatsch, and one or two less representa- 
tive, there is nothing to compare with the artistic 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 181 

excellence and restrained good taste of Life or 
Punch, for example. 

There is one illustrated paper published in 
Munich, Simplicissimus, which deserves more 
than negligent and passing comment. It has 
two artists of whom I know nothing except what 
I have learned from their work, Th. Th. Heine 
and Gulbransson. These men are Aristophanic 
in their ability as draughtsmen and as censors, 
in striking at the weaknesses, political, military, 
and official, of their countrymen. Their work is 
something quite new in Germany, and worthy of 
comparison with the best in any country. It is 
not elegant, it is Rabelaisian; and though I have 
nothing to retract in regard to coarseness, and 
no wish to commend the attitude taken toward 
German political and social life, in fairness one is 
bound to call attention to the pictorial work in 
this particular paper as of a very high order, and 
to recognize its power. If Heine could have 
turned his wit into the drawings of Hogarth, we 
should have had something not unlike SimpJicis- 
simuSy and any German annoyed at the criti- 
cisms of his national life from the pen of a for- 
eigner, may well I urn lo his own SimplicissimuSy 
and be humbly grateful that no foreign pen- 
point can possibly pierce more deeply, than this 
domestic pencil, at work in his own country. 



182 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The danger for the critic and the wit, which 
few avoid, Is that with Incomparable advantages 
over his opponent he will not play fair. In spite 
of the awful reputation of our so-called "yellow 
press," which is often boisterously impudent, and 
sometimes Inclined to indulge In comments and 
revelations of the private affairs of individuals 
which can only be dubbed coarse and cowardly, 
there is seldom a descent to the indescribably in- 
decent caricatures which one finds every week in 
the Illustrated papers In Germany. As we have 
noted elsewhere, just as the citizens of Berlin, as 
one sees them in the streets and in public places, 
give one the impression that they are not house- 
trained, so many of the pens and pencils which 
serve the German press, leave one with the feeling 
that their possessors would not know how to 
behave in a cultivated and well-regulated house- 
hold. 

Every gentleman in Germany must have been 
ashamed of the writing in the German press after 
the sinking of the Titanic. There was a blaze of 
brutal Pharisaism that put a bar-sinister across 
any claim to gentlemanllness on the part of the 
majority. When every brave man in the world 
was lamenting the death of Scott, the English 
Arctic explorer, one German paper Intimated 
that he had committed suicide to avoid the 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 183 

bankruptcy forced upon him by England's lack 
of generosity toward his expedition. It is al- 
most unbelievable that such a cur should have 
escaped unthraslied, even among the German 
journalists. These two examples of lack of fine 
feeling mark them for what they are. Among 
gentlemen no comment is necessary. The mark 
of breeding is more often discovered in what 
one does not say, does not write, does not do, 
than in positive action. There was much, at 
that time, when fifteen hundred people had been 
buried in icy water, and scores of American and 
English gentlemen had gone down to death, just 
in answer to: "Ladies first, gentlemen!" that 
should have been left unsaid and unwritten. 
The quality of the German journalist, with half 
a dozen exceptions, was betrayed to the full 
in those few days, and many a German cheek 
mantled with shame. 

However, a man may eat with his knife and 
still be an authority on bridge-building; he may 
tuck his nai)kin under his chin preparatory to, 
and as an armor against, the well-known vagaries 
of liquids, before he takes his soup or his soft- 
boiled eggs, and si ill be an aiilhority on soap- 
making; he mav wear a knilUMl waistcoat with a 
frock-coat to luncheon, and be deeply versed in 
]{ussian historv. He mav have no inklinir of 



184 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the traditions of fair play, or of the reticences of 
courtesy, no shred of knightliness, and yet be a 
scholar in his way. Indeed, in none of the other 
cultured countries does one find so many men of 
trained minds, but with such untrained manners 
and morals. In their lack of sensation-mongering, 
in their indifference to social gossip, in their 
trustworthy and learned comments upon things 
scientific, musical, theatrical, literary, and his- 
torical, they are as men to school-boys com- 
pared to the American press. They have the 
utter contempt for mere smartness that only 
comes with severe educational training. They 
have the scholar's impatience with trivialities. 
They skate, not to cut their names on the ice, 
but to get somewhere, and the whole industrial 
and scientific world knows how quickly they have 
arrived. 

Our newspapers make a business of training 
their readers in that worst of all habits, mental 
dissipation. The German press is not thus 
guilty. Despite all I have written, I am quite 
sure that if I were banished from the active world 
and could see only half a dozen journals on my 
lonely island, one of them would be a German 
newspaper. It may be that I have a perverted 
literary taste, for I can get more humor, more 
keen enjoyment, out of a census report or an ety- 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 185 

mological dictionary than from a novel. My 
favorite literary dissipation is to read the works 
of that disliiiguished statistician at Wasliingloii, 
Mr. O. P. Austin, the poet-laureate of industrial 
America, or the toilsome and exciting ver})al 
journeys of the Rev. Mr. Skeat. The classic hu- 
morists do not compare with them, in my humble 
opinion, as sources of fantastic surprises. This, 
perhaps, accounts for my sincere admiration for 
that quality of scholarship, learning, and accu- 
racy in the German press. Nor does the pos- 
session of these qualities in the least controvert 
the impression given by the German press of 
political powerlessness, of social ignorance and 
incompetence, and of boorish ignorance of the 
laws of common decency in international com- 
ment and controversy. A great scholar may be 
a booby in a drawing-room, and a lamentable 
failure as an adviser in matters political and so- 
cial. "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, 
so is a man that wandereth from his place." 
Germany has put some astonishing failures to 
her credit through her belief that learning can 
take the place of common-sense, and scholarship 
do I lie tasks of that intelligent and experienced 
observation to which the abused word, worldli- 
noss, is given. Perhaps it is as well that the 
German press declines to keep a social diary; 



186 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

well, too, that it has no candidates for the oflSce 
of society Haruspex, whose ghoulish business it 
is to find omens and prophecies in the entrails 
of his victims. In that respect, at any rate, 
both society and the press in Germany are as is 
the salon to the scullery, compared with ours. 
As for that little knot of illustrated weekly 
papers in England, with their nauseating letter- 
press for snobs inside, and their advertisements 
of patent complexion remedies and corsets out- 
side, there is nothing like them in Germany or 
anywhere else, so far as I know. You may ad- 
vertise your shooting-party, your dance, or your 
dinner-party, and thus keep yourself before the 
world as though you were a whiskey, a soap, or 
a superfluous-hair-destroyer, if you please, and, 
alas, many there are who do so. At least Ger- 
many knows nothing of this weekly auction of 
privacy, this nauseating snobbery which is a 
fungus-growth seen at its strongest in British 
soil. 

I am bound, both by tradition and experience 
as an American, to discover the reason for such 
conditions in the lack of fluidity in social and 
political life in Germany. The industrials, the 
military, the nobility, the civil servants, and to 
some extent the Jews, are all in separate social 
compartments; and the political parties as well 



GERMAN POLITICAL J'AiiTIES 187 

keep much to themselves and without the per- 
sonal give and take outside of their purely official 
life which obtains in America and in England. 

It is an impossible suggestion, I know, but if 
the upper and lower houses of the empire, or of 
Prussia, could meet in a match at base-ball, or 
golf, or cricket; if the army could play the civil 
service; if the newspaper correspondents could 
play the under-secretaries; if they could all be 
induced occasionally, to throw off their mental 
and moral uniforms, and to meet merely as men, 
a current of fresh air would blow through Ger- 
many, that she would never after permit to be 
shut out. 

Personal dignity is refreshed, not lost, by a 
romp. Who has not seen distinguished Ameri- 
cans and distinguished Englishmen, in their own 
or in their friends' houses, or at one or another 
of our innumerable games, behaving like boys 
out of school, crawling about beneath improvised 
skins and growhng and roaring in charades; in- 
dulging in flying chaff of one another; in the 
skirts of their wives and sisters playing cricket, 
or base-ball, or tennis with the one hand only; 
caricaturing good-humoredly some of their own 
c^licial l)usiness, or arranging a match of some 
kind where their own servants join in to make 
up a side; or, and well I remember it, half a 



188 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

dozen youths of about fifty playing cricket with 
one stump and a broom-handle for an hour one 
hot afternoon, amid tumbles and shouts of laugh- 
ter, and a shower of impromptu nicknames, and 
one or two of them bore names known all over 
the English-speaking world. Nobody loses any 
dignity, any importance; but there is an uncon- 
querable stiffness in Germany that makes me 
laugh almost as I make this suggestion. We 
have only a certain reserve of serious work in us. 
To attempt to be serious all the time is never 
to be at rest. This worried busyness, which is a 
characteristic of the more mediocre of my own 
countrymen also, is really a symptom of deficient 
vitality. Things are in the saddle and you are 
the mule and not the man, if you are such an one. 
The stiffness and self-consciousness of the Ger- 
mans is really a sign of their lack of confidence 
in themselves. Youth is always more serious 
than middle age, for the same reason. A man 
who is at home in the world laughs and is gay; 
he who is shy and doubtful scowls. It is the 
God-fearing who are not afraid, it is the man- 
fearing who are awkward and uncomfortable. 

The first thing to be afraid of is oneself, but 
after oneself is conquered why be afraid to let 
him loose! 

It would be quite untrue to give the impres- 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 180 

sion that there is no fun, no larking, no chaff, in 
Germany, although I am bound to say that there 
is little of this last. I can bear witness to a 
healthy love of fim, and to an exuberant exploi- 
tation of youthful vitality in many directions 
among the students and younger officers, for 
example. Better companions for a romp exist 
nowhere. Having been blessed with an undue 
surplus of vitality, which for many years kept 
me fully occupied in directing its expenditiu'c, 
alas, not always with success, I can only add that 
I found as many youthful companions in a simi- 
lar predicament in Germany, as anywhere else. 
But with the Englishman and the Ameri- 
can, both temperament and environment permit 
youthfulness to last longer. The German must 
soon get into the mill and grind and be ground, 
and he is by temperament more easily caught 
and put into the uniform of a constantly correct 
behavior. As for us, we are all boj's still at 
thirty, many of us at fifty, and some of us die 
ere the school-boy exuberance has all been 
squeezed or dried out of us. Not so in Germany. 
One sees more men in Germany who give tlie 
impression tlial I hey could not by any possi- 
bility ever have been boys than with us. They 
begin to look cramped at thirty, and thoy are 
stitr at fifty, as though they had been fed on a 



190 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

diet of circumspection, caution, and obedience. 
They are drilled early and they soon become 
amenable, and then even indulgent, toward the 
drill-master. 

This German people have not developed into a 
nation, they have been squeezed into the mould 
of a nation. The nation is not for the people, 
the people are for the nation. "By the word 
Constitution," writes Lord Bolingbroke, "we 
mean, whenever we speak with propriety and 
exactness, the assemblage of laws, institutions, 
and customs derived from certain fixed princi- 
ples of reason, directed to certain fixed objects 
of public good, that compose the general sys- 
tem by which the community hath agreed to be 
governed." The Germans have no such con- 
stitution, for the community was scarcely con- 
sulted, much less hath it agreed to the general 
system by which it is governed. 

Of course, in every nation its affairs are, and 
must be, conducted by ofiicials. That is as true 
of America as of Germany. The fundamental 
difference is that with us these official persons 
are executive ofl[icers only, the real captain is the 
people; while in Germany these official persons 
are the real governors of the people, subject to 
the commands of one who repeatedly and pub- 
licly asserts that his commission is from God and 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 191 

not from the people. This puts whole classes of 
the community permanently into uniform, and 
the wearers of these uniforms are almost afraid 
to laugh, and would consider it sacrilege to romp. 
Caution is a very puny form of morality. 
*'IIe that observe th the wind shall not sow; and 
]\v that regardeth the clouds shall not reap." 
It is as true politically as of other spheres of life 
that "he or she who lets the world or his own 
portion of it choose his plan of life for him has 
no need of any other faculty than the ape-like 
one of imitation." Thus writes John Stuart 
INIill, and what else can be said of the political 
activities of the Germans? What journalist or 
what patriot indeed can take seriously a majority 
that has no power.^ What people can call itself 
free to whom its rulers are not responsible.'^ 
The Social Democrats, at the moment of writ- 
ing, have won one hundred and ten seats in the 
Reichstag, but the army and navy estimates are 
beyond their reach, the taxes are fixtures, a con- 
stitution is a dream, and if they are cantankerous 
or truculent the Reichstag will be dismissed by a 
wave of the hand. Say what one will, they are a 
iiiainmillary people politically, and the strongest 
party in tlie Reichstag is merely an energetic 
})olitical mangonel. Their leaders moult opin- 
ions, they do not mould them, and could not 
translate them into action if they did. 



192 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Not since 1874 has there been a Reichstag so 
strongly radical, but nothing will come of it. 
The Reichskanzler, Doctor von Bethmann-Holl- 
weg, did not hesitate to take an early opportu- 
nity, after the opening of the new Reichstag, to 
state boldly that the issue was Authority versus 
Democratization, and that he had no fear of the 
result. It is customary for the newly elected 
Praesidium, the president and two vice-presi- 
dents of the Reichstag, to be received in audi- 
ence by the Emperor. On this occasion the So- 
cialists forbade their representative to go, and 
the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any 
of them. As usual, they played into his hands. 
Hans hleiht immer Hans, and on this occasion 
his vulgar lack of good manners only brought 
contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left 
the Emperor as the outstanding dignified figure 
in the controversy. Such behavior is not cal- 
culated to invite confidence, and not likely to 
induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its 
destinies in such hands, not at any rate for some 
time to come. "Though thou shouldest bray a 
fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, 
yet will not his foolishness depart from him." 

Intellectually Germany is a republic, and we 
Americans perhaps beyond all other peoples 
have profited by her literature, her philosophy, 
her music, her scientific and economic teaching. 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 103 

We have kneaded these things into our poHtical 
as well as into our intellectual life. *' Intel- 
lectual emancipation, if it does not give us at 
the same time control over ourselves, is poison- 
ous." And who writes thus? Goethe! But 
the intellectual freedom of Germany has done 
next to nothing to bring about political or, in 
the realm of journalism, personal self-control. 

It is a strange state of affairs. Intelligent 
men and women in Germany do not realize it. 
Not once, but many times, I have been told: 
"You foreigners are forever commenting upon 
our bureaucracy, our ofRcialdom, but it is not 
as all-powerful as you think. We have plenty 
of freedom!" These people are often them- 
selves officials, nearly always related to, or of 
the society, of the ruling class. The rulers and 
the ruling class have naturally no sense of op- 
pression, no feeling that they are unduly subject 
to others, since the others are themselves. I 
am quite willing to believe of my own and of 
other people's personal opinions that they are 
not dogmas merely because they are baptized in 
intolerance. I must leave it to the reader to 
judge from the facts, whether or no the Germans 
have a political autonomy, which permits the 
exercise and development of political jiower. A 
glance at the political parties themselves will 
make this perhaps the more clear. 



194 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The official organization of the conservative 
party, may be said to date back to the founding 
of the Neue Preussische Zeitung in 1848, and the 
organization of the party in many parts of Ger- 
many. Earher still, Burke was the hero of the 
pioneers of this party, whose first newspaper had 
for editor, no less a person than Heinrich von 
Kleist, and whose first endeavors were to sup- 
port God and the King, and to throw off the 
yoke of foreign domination. 

In 1876 was formed the Deutsch-Konservativ 
party supporting Bismarck. "Konigthum von 
Gottes Gnaden" is still their watchword, with op- 
position to Social Democracy, support of im- 
perialism, agrarian and industrial protection, and 
Christian teaching in the schools, as the planks 
of their platform. They also combat Jewish in- 
fluence everywhere, particularly in the schools. 
Allied to this party is the Bund der Landwirte 
and the Deutscher Bauernhund. In the election 
of 1912 they elected forty-five representatives to 
the Reichstag, a serious falling off from the sixty- 
three seats held previous to that election. The 
Free Conservative portion of the Conservative 
party, is composed of the less autocratic mem- 
bers of the landed nobility, but there is little 
difference in their point of view. 

The Centrum, or Catholic party, is in theory 
not a religious party; in practice it is, though it 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 195 

does not bar out Protestant members who hold 
similar views to their own. Its political activity 
began in 1870, and the first call for the formation 
of the party came from Reichcnsperger in the 
Kulnischcr Volkszcitung. The famous leader of 
the party, and a politician who even held his own 
against Bismarck, was the Hanoverian Justiz- 
minister. Doctor Ludwig Windthorst. The 
stormy time of the party was from 1873 to 1878, 
when Bismarck attempted to oppose the growing 
power of the Catholic Church, and more par- 
ticularly of the Jesuits. The so-called May laws 
of that year forbade Roman Catholic interven- 
tion in civil affairs; obliged all ministers of re- 
ligion to pass the higher-schools examinations 
and to study theology three years at a university; 
made all seminaries subject to state inspection; 
and gave fuller protection to those of other 
creeds. In 1878 Bismarck needed the support 
of the Centrum party to carry through the new 
tariff, and the iNIay laws, except that regarding 
(•i\il marriage, were repealed. The party stands 
for religious teaching in the primary schools. 
Christian marriage, federal character of empire, 
protection, and independence of the state. 
More llian any other party it has kept its rep- 
resentation in the Reichstag at about the same 
number. In inOI> they cast 1,875,300 votes and 
had 100 members. In 1907 thev had 103 mem- 



196 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

bers, and in the last election of 1912 they won 
93 seats. Even this Catholic party is now di- 
vided. Count Oppersdorff leads the "Only- 
Catholic" part}^ against the more liberal section 
which has its head-quarters at Cologne, where 
the late Cardinal Fisher was the leader. At the 
session of the Reichstag in 1913, when the ques- 
tion of the readmission of the Jesuits was raised, 
the Centrum party even sided with the Social- 
ists in the matter of the expropriation law for 
Posen, in order to annoy the chancellor for his 
opposition to themselves. Such political mis- 
cegenation as this does not show a high level of 
faith or of policy. 

It may be of interest to the reader to know 
that in 1903 the population of Germany was 
58,629,000, and the number qualified to vote 
12,531,000; in 1907 the population was 61,983,- 
000, and the number qualified to vote, 13,353,- 
000; in 1912 the population was 65,407,000, and 
the qualified voters numbered over 14,000,000, 
of whom 12,124,503 voted. In 1903 there were 
9,496,000 votes cast; in 1907, 11,304,000. The 
German Reichstag has 397 members, or 1 rep- 
resentative to every 156,000 inhabitants; the 
United States House of Representatives has 433 
members, or 1 for every 212,000 inhabitants; 
England, 670 members, or 1 for every 62,000; 
France, 584, or 1 for every 67,000; Italy, 508, or 



GERMAN rOLITICAL I'AllTIES 197 

1 for every 04,000; Austria, 510, or 1 for every 
51,000. 

Despite the fact that the Conservative and 
the Catliolic parties have much in common, and 
are the parties of the Riglit and Centre: these 
names are given the poHtical parties in the 
Reichstag according to their grouping on the 
right, centre, and left of the house, looking from 
llie tribune or speaker's platform, from which all 
set speeches are delivered, thc}^ are often at odds 
among themselves, and Bismarck and Billow 
brought about tactical differences among them 
for their own purposes. Their programme may 
be summed up as "As you were," which is not 
inspiring either as an incentive or as a command. 

The Liberal parties are the National liberale; 
Fortschrittspartei, or Progressives; and the Frei- 
sinnige Volkspartei, or Liberal Democratic party. 

The National Liberal party was strongest dur- 
ing the days when Prussia's efforts were directed 
mainly toward a federation and a strengthening 
of the bonds which hold the states together; 
*'unter dem Donner dcr Kanonen von Konig- 
gratz ist der nationallil)erale Gedanke geboren." 
Loyalty to emperor and empire, country above 
party, a fleet conipcteiil to prolcd the country 
and its overseas interests, are watchwords of the 
I);ni y. The pnrly is protectionist, and in matters 



198 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of school and church administration in accord 
with the Free Conservatives. 

The Liberal Democratic party demands elec- 
toral reform, no duties on foodstuffs, and im- 
perial insurance laws for the workingmen. 

The Fortschrittspartei finds its intellectual 
beginnings, in the condensing of the hazy clouds 
of revolution in 1848, in the persons of Wilhelm 
von Humboldt and Freiherr von Stein. Politi- 
cally, the party came into being in 1861, and 
Waldeck, von Hoverbeck, and Virchow are fa- 
miliar names to students of German political 
history; later Eugen Richter was the leader of 
the party in the Reichstag. This party is still 
for free-trade, in opposition to military and bu- 
reaucratic government, favorable to parliamen- 
tary government. Of the grouping and regroup- 
ing of these parties; of their divisions for and 
against Bismarck's policies; of their splits on the 
questions of free- trade and protection; of their 
leanings now to the right, now to the left; of 
their differences over details of taxation for 
purposes of defence; of their attitudes toward a 
powerful fleet, and toward the Jesuits, it would 
require a volume, and a large one, to describe. 
Though it is dangerous to characterize them, 
they may be said without inaccuracy to repre- 
sent the democratic movement in Germany both 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 199 

in thought and pohtical action, and to hold a 
wavering phicc between the Conservatives and 
the Social Democrats. 

The Social Democratic party, the party of the 
wage-earners, only assumed recognizable outlines 
after the appeal of Ferdinand Lassalle for a 
workingman's congress at Leipsic in 18G3. In 
1877 they mustered 493,000 voters. Bismarck 
and the monarchy looked askance at their grow- 
ing power. It was attempted to pass a law, 
punishing with fine and imprisonment: "wer in 
einer den offentlichen Frieden gefiihrdenden 
Weise verschiedene Klassen der Bevolkerung 
gegeneinander offentlich aufreizt oder wer in 
gleichcr Weise die Institute der Ehe, der Fa- 
milie und des Eigentums offentlich durch Rede 
oder Schrift angreift." This was a direct attack 
upon the Socialists, but the Reichstag refused to 
pass the law. In May, 1878, and shortly after 
in June, two attempts were made upon the life of 
the Kaiser. Bismarck then easily and quickly 
forced through the new law against the So- 
cialists. 

Under this law newspapers were suppressed, 
organizations dissolved, meetings forbidden, and 
certain leaders banished. For twelve years the 
party was kept under the watchful restraint of 
the police, and their propaganda made difficult 
and in many places impossible. After the repeal 



200 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of this law, and for the last twenty years, the 
party has increased with surprising rapidity. In 
1893 the Social Democrats cast 1,787,000 votes; 
in 1898, 2,107,000; in 1903, more than 3,000,000; 
and in the last election, 1912, 4,238,919; and they 
have just returned 110 delegates to the Reichstag 
out of a total of 397 members. 

It is noteworthy that in America there is one 
Socialist member of the House of Representa- 
tives; while in Germany, which combines auto- 
cratic methods of government, with something 
more nearly approaching state ownership and 
control, than any other country in the world, the 
most numerous party in the present Reichstag 
is that of the Social Democrats. 

Freedom is the only medicine for discontent. 
There is no rope for the hanging of a demagogue 
like free speech; no such disastrous gift for the 
socialist as freedom of action. Imagine what 
would have happened in America if we had at- 
tempted to suppress Bryan! The result of giv- 
ing him free play and a fair hearing, the result of 
allowing the people to judge for themselves, has 
been a prolonged spectacle of political hari-kiri 
which has had a wholesome though negative 
educational influence. The most accomplished 
oratorical Pierrot of our day, who changes his 
political philosophy as easily as he changes his 
costume, has seen one hundred and sixty cities 



GERMAN rOJJTJCAL TAUTIKS 201 

and towns in America turn to govcrnmciil })y 
commission, and lias kept the heraldic donkey 
always just out of reach of the j)olitical carrots, 
until the Republican party itself fairly pushed 
the donkey into the carrot-field, hut even then 
willi another leader. No autocrat could have 
done so much. 

As early as 1887 Auer, Bebel, and Liebknecht 
outlined the programme of the party, and this 
programme, again revised at Erfurt in 1891, 
stands as the expression of their demands. They 
claim that: "Die Arbeiterklasse kann ihre oko- 
nomischen Kiimpfe nicht flihren und ihre okono- 
mische Organisation nicht entwickeln ohne polit- 
ische Rechte." Roughly they demand : the right 
to form unions and to hold public meetings; sepa- 
ration of church and state; education free and 
secular, and the feeding of school-children; state 
expenditure to be met exclusively by taxes on 
incomes, property, and inheritance; people to 
decide on peace and war; direct system of voting, 
one adult one vote; citizen army for defence; 
referendum; international court of arbitration. 
Their hauler in llu> Reichstag to-day is Bebel, 
and from what I have heard of the debates in 
that assembly I should judge tliat tliev liave 
not only a niajtirity over any other ])arty in 
numbers, l)ut alx) in sjieaking ability. The 
members of [\\v Socialist party always lea\-e tlu^ 



202 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 



house in a body, at the end of each session, just 
before the cheers are called for, for the Emperor. 
They have become more and more daring of late 
in their outspoken criticism of both the Emperor 
and his ministers. In consequence, they are re- 
plied to with ever-increasing dislike and bitter- 
ness by their opponents. At a recent banquet of 
old university students in Berlin, Freiherr von 
Zedlitz, presiding, quoted Barth and Richter: 
"The victory of Social Democracy means the 
destruction of German civilization, and a Social 
Democratic state would be nothing more than a 
gigantic house of correction." 

In addition to the four important political 
divisions in the Reichstag, the Conservative, 
Liberal, Clerical, and Socialist, there are many 
subdivisions of these. Since 1871 there have 
been some forty different parties represented, 
eleven conservative, fourteen liberal, two cleri- 
cal, nine national-particularist, and five socialist. 
To-day, besides four small groups and certain 
representatives acknowledging no party, there 
are some eleven different factions. 





1S71 


ISSl 


1S93 


1907 


1912 


Right, or Con- 
servative .... 

Liberal 

Clerical 

Social Democrats 


895,000 

1,884,000 

973,000 

124,000 


1,210,000 

1,948,000 

1,618,000 

312,000 


1,806,000 
2,102,000 
1,920,000 
1,787,000 


2,141,000 
3,078,000 
2,779,000 
3,259,000 


1,149,916 

3,227,846 
2,012,990 
4,238,919 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 203 

So far as one may so divide them, the voters 
have ahgned themselves as follows: In the last 
elections, in 1012, the Conservatives and their 
allies elected 75 members; the Clericals, 93; the 
Poles, 18; and the Guelphs, 5; and these come 
roughly under the heading of the party of 
the Right. Under the heading Left, the Na- 
tional Liberals and Progressive party elected 88, 
and the Social Democrats 110 members to the 
Reichstag. The parties stand therefore roughly 
divided at the moment of writing as 191 Conser- 
vative, and 200 Radical, with 6 members unac- 
counted for. The Poles with 18 seats, the 
Alsatians with 5, the Guelphs and Lorrainers 
and Danes with 8 seats, and the no-party with 
2 seats, are also represented, but are here placed 
with the party of the Right. To divide the 
parties into two camps gives the result that, 
roughly, four and a half millions voted that they 
were satisfied, and seven and a half millions 
that they were not. 

No doubt any chancellor, including Doctor 
von Bethmann-Hollweg, would be glad to divide 
the Reichstag as definitely and easily as I have 
done. Theoretically these divisions may be use- 
ful to the reader, but practically to the leader 
they are useless. Rebel, the leader of the Social 
Democrats, declares himself ready to shoulder a 



204 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

musket to defend the country; Heydebrandt, the 
leader of the Conservatives, and possibly the 
most effective speaker in the Reichstag, has 
spoken warmly in favor of social reform laws ; the 
Clericals are for peace, almost at any price; the 
Agrarians or Junkers for a tariff on foodstuffs and 
cattle, and one might continue analyzing the 
parties until one would be left bewildered at their 
refining of the political issues at stake. Back to 
God and the Emperor; and forward to a consti- 
tutional monarchy with the chancellor responsi- 
ble to the Reichstag, and perhaps later a repub- 
lic, represent the two extremes. Between the 
two everything and anything. It is hard to put 
together a team out of these diverse elements 
that a chancellor can drive with safety, and with 
the confidence that he will finally arrive with his 
load at his destination. In addition to these 
parties there are the frankly disaffected repre- 
sentatives of conquered Poland, of conquered 
Holstein, of conquered Alsace-Lorraine, and of 
conquered Hanover, this last known as the 
Guelph party; all of them anti-Prussian. 

It is not to be wondered at that the com- 
ments, deductions, and prophecies of foreigners 
are wildly astray when dealing with German pol- 
itics. In America, religious differences and ra- 
cial differences play a small role at Washington; 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 205 

but the 220 Protestants, the 141 CathoHcs, the 3 
Jews, the 5 free-thinkers, and so on, in the last 
Reichstag arc in a way parties as well. In that 
same assembly 2 members were over 80, 78 
over CO, 271 between 40 and GO, 42 under 40, 
and 3 under 30 years of age. One hundred and 
six members were landed proprietors; 220 were 
of the liberal professions, including 37 authors, 
35 judges or magistrates, 21 clericals, 7 doctors, 
and 1 artist; 13 merchants; 21 manufacturers; 
and 20 shopkeepers and laborers. Seventy -two 
members were of the nobility, a decided falling 
off from 1878, when they numbered 162. Two 
hundred and fifty members were educated at a 
university, and practically all may be said to 
have had an education equal if not superior to 
that given in our smaller colleges. 

In the American Congress, in the House of 
Representatives, we have 212 lawyers, though 
there are only 135,000 lawyers in our population 
of 90,000,000. AVc have in that same assembly 
50 business men, representing the 15,000,000 of 
our people engaged in trade and industry. Per- 
haps the German Reichstag is as fairly represent- 
ative as our own House of Representatives, 
though both assemblies show I ho babyhood of 
civilization which still votes for flashing eyes, 
thumping fists, hollering patriotism, and smooth 



206 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

phrases. The surprising feature of elective as- 
sembhes is that here and there Messrs. Self- 
Control, Abihty, Dignity, and Independence 
find seats at all. The members are paid, since 
1906, a salary of 3,000 marks, with a deduction 
of 20 marks for each day's absence. They have 
free passes over German railways during the 
session. The Reichstag is elected every five 
years. 

The appearance of the Reichstag to the 
stranger is notable for the presence of military, 
naval, and clerical uniforms. It is, as one looks 
down upon them, an assembly where at least 
one-fourth are bald or thin-haired, and together 
they give the impression of being big in the 
waist, careless in costume, slovenly in carriage, 
and lacking proper feeding, grooming, and ex- 
ercise. It is clearly an assemblage, not of men 
of action, but of men of theories. Not only 
their appearance betrays this, but their debates 
as well, and what one knows of their individual 
training and preferences goes to substantiate this 
judgment of them. There are no soldiers, sail- 
ors, explorers, governors of alien people; no men, 
in short, who have solved practical problems 
dealing with men, but only theorists. Such men 
as Gotzen, Solf , and others, who have had actual 
experience of dealing with men, are rare excep- 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 207 

tions. Probably the best men in Germany wisli, 
and wish heartily, that there were more such 
men; indeed, I betray no secret when I declare 
that the most intelligent and patriotic criticism 
in Germany coincides with my own. 

The electoral divisions of Germany, as we have 
noted elsewhere, have not been changed for 
forty years, w^ith a consequent disproportionate 
representation from the rural, as over against the 
enormously increased population, of the urban 
and industrial districts. The Conservatives, for 
example, in 1907 gained 1 seat for every 18,232 
votes; the Clericals or Centrum, 1 seat for every 
20,626 votes; the National Liberals, 1 for every 
30,635 votes; and the Social Democrats, 1 for 
every 75,781 votes. It may be seen from this, 
how overwhelming must be the majority of votes 
cast by the Social Democrats, in order to gain a 
majority representation in the Reichstag itself. 
In 1912 they cast more than one-third of the 
votes, and are represented by 110 members out 
of the total of 397. 

For the student of German politics it is im- 
porlanl to remember, that the Social Demo- 
crats are not all representatives of socialism or of 
democracy. Their demands at this present time 
are far from the radical theory that all sources of 
production should be in the hands of the people. 



208 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Only a small number of very red radicals demand 
that. Their successes have been, and they are 
real successes, along the lines of greater protec- 
tion and more political liberty for the working- 
man. The number of their votes is swelled by 
thousands of voters who express their general 
discontent in that way. The state in Germany 
owns railroads, telegraph and telephone lines; 
operates mines and certain industries, and both 
controls and directly helps certain large manu- 
factories which are either of benej&t to the state, 
or which, if they were entirely independent, 
might prove a danger to the state. The state 
enforces insurance against sickness, accident, and 
old age, and the three million office-holders are 
dependent upon the state for their livelihood and 
their pensions. 

It is a striking thing in Germany to see human 
nature cropping out, even under these ideal con- 
ditions; for it is difficult to see how the state 
could be more grandmotherly in her officious care 
of her own. But this is not enough. Physical 
safety is not enough, the demand is for political 
freedom, and for a government answerable to 
the people and the people's representatives. 
Rich men, powerful men, representative men by 
the thousands, men whom one meets of all sorts 
and conditions, and who are neither radical nor 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 209 

socialistic, vote the Social Democrat ticket. 
The Social Democrats are by no means all demo- 
crats nor all socialists. As a body of voters they 
are united only in the expression of their discon- 
tent with a government of officials, practically 
chosen and kept in power over their heads, and 
with whose tenure of office they have nothing 
to do. 

The fact that the members of the Reichstag 
are not in the saddle, but are used unwillingly 
and often contemptuously as a necessary and 
often stubborn and unruly pack-animal by the 
Kaiser-appointed ministers; the fact that they 
are pricked forw^ard, or induced to move by a 
tempting feed held just beyond the nose, has 
something to do, no doubt, with the lack of 
unanimity which exists. The diverse elements 
debate with one another, and waste their energy 
in rebukes and recriminations which lead no- 
where and result in nothing. I have listened to 
many debates in the Reichstag where the one 
aim of the speeches seemed to be merely to un- 
burden the soul of the speaker. He had no 
plan, no proposal, no solution, merely a con- 
fession to make. After forty-odd years the 
Germans, in many ways the most cultivated 
nation in the world, are still without real rep- 
resentative government. 



210 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Why should the press or society take this as- 
sembly very seriously, when, as the most im- 
portant measure of which they are capable, they 
can vote to have themselves dismissed by de- 
clining to pass supply bills; and when, as has 
happened four times in their history, they return 
chastened, tamed, and amenable to the wishes of 
their master? 

No wonder the political writing in the press 
seems to us vaporish and without dejfinite aims. 
It is perhaps due to this weakness that the writ- 
ing in the German journals upon other subjects 
is very good indeed. The best energies of the 
writers are devoted to what may be called edu- 
cational and literary expositions. In the field 
of foreign politics the German press is less well- 
informed, less instructive, and consequently irri- 
tating. The poverty of material resources makes 
such writing as that of Sir Valentine Chirrol, 
and in former days that of Mr. G. W. Smalley, 
beyond the reach of the German journalist, and 
their press is painfully narrow, frequently unfair, 
and often purposely insulting to foreign coun- 
tries. They are not only anti-English, but anti- 
French, anti-American, and at times bitter. If 
the American people read the German news- 
papers there would be little love lost between us. 



BERLIN 

HE is a fortunate traveller who enters 
Berlin from the west, and toward the 
end of his journey rolls along over the 
twelve or fifteen miles of new streets, glides 
under the Brandenburger Tor, and finds himself 
in Unter den Linden. The Kaiserdamm, Bis- 
marck Strasse, Berliner Strasse, Charlottenbur- 
gerchaussee, Unter den Linden, give the most 
splendid street entrance into a city in the world. 
The pavement is without a hole, without a 
crack, and as clear of rubbish of any kind as a 
well-kept kitchen floor. The cleanliness is so 
noticeable that one looks searchingly for even a 
scrap of paper, for some trace of negligence, to 
modify this superiority over the streets of our 
American cities. But there is no consolation; 
the superiority is so incontestable that no com- 
parison is possible. For the whole twelve or 
fifteen miles the streets are lined with trees, or 
shrubs, or flowers, willi well-kept grass, and willi 
separate roads on each side for horsemen or foot- 
passengers. In the spring and summer the 
streets are a veritable garden. 

211 



212 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Broadway is 80 feet wide; Fifth Avenue is 100 
feet wide; the Champs Elysees is 233 feet wide; 
and TJnter den Linden is 196 feet wide, and has 
70 feet of roadway. 

For every square yard of wood pavement in 
Berhn there are 24 square yards of asphalt and 
37 square yards of stone. The total length of 
streets cleaned in Berlin, which has an area of 
25 square miles, according to a report of some 
few years ago, was 316 miles; there are 700 
streets and some 70 open places, and the area 
cleaned daily was 8,160,000 square yards. The 
cost of the care of the Berlin streets has risen 
with the growth of the city from 1,670,847 
marks,! in 1880, to 6,068,557 marks, in 1910. 
The total cost of the street-cleaning in New 
York, in 1907, was $9,758,922, and in Manhat- 
tan, The Bronx, and Brooklyn 5,129 men were 
employed; while the working force in Berlin, in 
1911, was 2,150. It should be said also that in 
New York an enormous amount of scavenging is 
paid for privately besides. In New York the 
street-sweepers are paid $2.19 a day; in Berlin 
the foremen receive 4.75 marks the first three 
years, and thereafter 5 marks; the men 3.75 
marks the first three years, then 4 marks, and 
after nine years' service 4.50 marks. The boy 

^The mark is equal to a little less than twenty-five cents. 



BERLIN 213 

assistants receive 2 marks, after two years 2.25 
marks, and after four years' service 3 marks. 
The whole force is paid every fourteen days. 
The street-cleaning department is divided into 
thirty-three districts, these districts into four 
groups, each with an inspector, and all under a 
head-inspector. Attached to each district are 
depots with yards for storage of vehicles, appa- 
ratus, brooms, shovels, uniforms, with machine 
shops, where on more than one occasion I have 
seen enthusiastic workmen trying experiments 
with new machiner}^ to facilitate their work. 

Over this whole force presides, a politician.'* 
Far from it; a technically educated man of wide 
experience, and, of the official of my visit I may 
add, of great courtes}^ and singular enthusiasm 
both for his task and for the men under him. 
What his politics are concerns nobody, what the 
politics of the party in power are concerns him 
not at all. That an individual, or a group of in- 
dividuals, powerful financially or politically, 
should influence him in his choice or in his 
placing of llic men under him is unthinkable. 
That a political boss in this or in that district, 
should dictate who should and who should not, 
be employed in the street-cleaning department, 
even down to the meanest remover of dung with 
a dust-pan, as was done for years in New York 



214 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and every other city in America, would be 
looked upon here as a farce of Topsy-Turvydom, 
with Alice in Wonderland in the title-role. 

The streets are cleaned for the benefit of the 
people, and not for the benefit of the pockets of a 
political aristocracy. The public service is a 
guardian, not a predatory organization. In our 
country when a man can do nothing else he be- 
comes a public servant; in Germany he can only 
become a public servant after severe examina- 
tions and ample proofs of fitness. The supe- 
riority of one service over the other is moral, not 
merely mechanical. 

The street-cleaning department is recruited 
from soldiers who have served their time, not 
over thirty -five years of age, and who must pass 
a doctor's examination, and be passed also by 
the police. The rules as to their conduct, their 
uniforms, their rights, and their duties, down to 
such minute carefulness as that they may not 
smoke on duty "except when engaged in pecul- 
iarly dirty and offensive labor," are here, as in all 
oflScial matters in Germany, outlined in laby- 
rinthine detail. Sickness, death, accident, are 
all provided for with a pension, and there are 
also certain gifts of money for long service. 
The police and the street-cleaning department 
co-operate to enforce the law, where private com- 



BERLIN 215 

panies or the city-owned street-railways are neg- 
ligent in making repairs, or in replacing pave- 
ment that has been disturbed or destroyed. 
There is no escape. If the work is not done 
promptly and satisfactorily, it is done by the city, 
charged against the delinquent, and collected ! 

One need go into no further details as to why 
and wherefore Berlin, Hamburg, even Cologne 
in these days, Leipsic, Dusseldorf, Dresden, 
Munich, keep their streets in such fashion, that 
they are as corridors to the outside of Irish 
hovels, as compared to the city streets of Amer- 
ica; for the definite and all-including answer 
and explanation are contained in the two w^ords : 
no politics. 

Berlin is governed by a town council, under a 
chief burgomaster and a burgomaster, and the 
civic magistracy, and the police, these last, how- 
ever, under state control. The chief burgomas- 
ter and the burgomaster are chosen from trained 
and experienced candidates, and are always men 
of wide experience and severe technical training, 
who have won a reputation in other towns as 
successful municipal administrators. 

In May, 1912, Wermuth, the son of the blind 
King of Hanover's right-hand man, and he him- 
self the recently resigned imperial secretary of 
the treasury, was elected Oberburgomaster of 



216 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Berlin. Such is the standing of the men named 
to govern the German cities. It is as though 
Ehhu Root should be elected mayor of New 
York, with Colonel John Biddle as police com- 
missioner, and Colonel Goethals as commissioner 
of street-cleaning. May the day come when we 
can avail ourselves of the services of such men to 
govern our cities! 

The magistracy numbers 34, of whom 18 re- 
ceive salaries. The town council consists of 
144 members, half of whom must be household- 
ers. They are elected for six years, and one- 
third of them retire every two years, but are 
eligible for re-election. They are elected by the 
three-class system of voting, which is described 
in another chapter. This three-class system of 
voting results in certain inequalities. In Prus- 
sia, for example, fifteen per cent, of the voters 
have two-thirds of the electoral power, and rela- 
tively the same may be said of Berlin. 

Unlike the municipal elections in American 
cities, the voters have only a simple ballot to put 
in the ballot-box. National and state politics 
play no part, and the voter is not confused by 
issues that have nothing to do with his city gov- 
ernment. The government of their cities is ar- 
ranged for on the basis that officials will be honest, 
and work for the city and not for themselves. 



BERLIN 217 

Our city organizations often give the air of living 
under laws framed to prevent thievery, hri})ery, 
l)laekniailing, and surreptitious murder. Wc 
make our municipal laws as though we were in 
the stone age. 

These German cities are also, unlike Ameri- 
can cities, autonomous. They have no state- 
made charters to interpret and to obey; they are 
not restricted as to debt or expenditure; and they 
are not in the grip of corporations that have 
bought or leased water, gas, electricity, or street- 
railway franchises, and these, represented by the 
wealthiest and most intelligent citizens, become, 
through the financial undertakings and interests 
of these very same citizens, often the worst ene- 
mies of their own city. The German cities are 
spared also the confusion, which is injected into 
our politics by a fortunately small class of re- 
formers, with the prudish peculiarities of morbid 
vestals; men who cannot work with other men, 
and who bring the virile virtues, the sound char- 
ities, and wholesome morality into contempt. 

We all know him, the smug snob of virtue. 
You may find him a professor at the university; 
you may find him leading prayer-meetings and 
preaching pure polities; you ma}^ find him the 
l)loodle.ss philanllin)i)ist; you may find him a 
rank atheist, with his patents for the bringing 



ns GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in of liis own kingdom of heaven. These are 
the men above all others who make the Tam- 
many izing of onr polities possil)le. Honest men 
eannot abide the hot-house atmosphere of their 
self-conscious virtue. Nothing is more discour- 
aging to robust virtue than the criticisms of 
teachers of ethics, who live in coddled comfort, 
upon private means, and other people's ideas. 

Germany is just now suil'ering from the 
spasms of moral colic, due to overeating. All 
luxury is in one form or another overeating. 
Berlin itself has grown too rapidly into the vi- 
cious ways of a metropolis, where spenders and 
wasters congregate. In 1011 the betting-ma- 
chines at the Berlin race-tracks took in $7,540, - 
000, of which the state took for its license, 1G% 
per cent. There were 128 days of racing, while in 
England they have 540 days' racing in the year! 

In 1911, 1,300,000 strangers visited Berlin, 
of whom 1,040, lO'Z were Germans, 97,083 Rus- 
sians, 39,555 Austrians, 30,550 Americans, and 
10,000 English. Berlin killed 2,000,000 beasts 
for food, including 10,500 horses; she takes 
care of 3,000 nightly in her night-shelters, puts 
away $17,500,000 in savings-banks, and has 
deposits therein of $90,500,000. On the other 
hand, she has built a palace of vice costing 
$1,025,000, in which on many nights between 



BKIILTN 210 

11 p. M. .'ind 2 A. M. Ilicy sell $8,000 worlli of 
chanii)agn(;. No one knows liis IJcrlin, who lias 
not p.'irhikrn of a "KalLcr Knlc," or a "Larid- 
wclirloi>p," a *'Scliluniiiicrpuiis(:li," or "Kiiic 
Wcissc mit dncr Strippc." TIicr! is slill a 
boyish notion about dissipation, and they liavo 
their own great classic to quote from, who in 
*'Faust" pours forlli llils ralher raw advic(; for 
gayety: 

"On'ifl. mir Iiiiicin ins vollo McnschcnlclH-n! 
Ein jcflcr Icht's, iiirht viclt^ii i.st's bckaurit, 
Und wo Ilir's i);i(kl., da i.sL (;,s iiitcrcssant!" 

Berlin is still in the throes of that sophomor- 
ical philosophy of life which believes that it is, 
from the point of view of sophistication, of age, 
when it is free to be befuddled with wine and 
befooled by women. But the German mind has 
no sympathy with hypocrisy. They may be bru- 
tal in their rather material views of morals, but 
they are frank. There may be mental prigs 
among them, but there are no moral prigs. In 
both England and America we suffer from a cer- 
tain morbid ethical daintiness. There is a ripe- 
ness of moral fastidiousness that is often difficult 
to distinguish from rottenness. It is p;ni of I he 
feminism of America, born of Kmr prosperity, for 
not one of these fastidious moralists is not a rich 
man, and Germany escapes this difficulty. 



220 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The government of a German city is so sim- 
ple in its machinery that every voter can easily 
understand it. No doubt Seth Low and George 
L. Rives could explain to an intelligent man the 
charter under which New York City is governed, 
but they are very, very rare exceptions. 

Our city government is bad, not because de- 
mocracy is a failure, not because Americans are 
inherently dishonest, but because we are a super- 
ficially educated people, untrained to think, and, 
therefore, still worshipping the Jeffersonian fe- 
tich of divided responsibility between the three 
branches of the government. The judicial, the 
legislative, and the executive are, with minute 
care, forced to check and to impede one another, 
and we even carry this antiquated superstition, 
born of a suspicious and timid republicanism, 
into the government of our cities. With the ex- 
ception of those cities in America which are gov- 
erned by commissions, our cities are slaves as 
compared with the German cities. They are 
slaves of the predatory politicians, and they, on 
the other hand, are the bribed taskmasters of 
the rich corporations. The German asks in be- 
wilderment why our men of wealth, of leisure, 
and of intelligence are not devoting themselves to 
the service of the state and the city. Alas, the 
answer is the pitiable one that the electoral ma- 



BERLIN 221 

chinery is so complicated that the voters can be 
and are, continually liumbiiggod; and worse, 
many of the wealthy and intelligent, through 
their stake in valuable city franchises, are incom- 
petent to deal fairly with the municipal affairs of 
their own city. Both in England and in America, 
the man in the street is quite sound in his judg- 
ment, when he declines to trust those who dab- 
ble in securities w'ith which their own department 
has dealings. The British Caesar's wife official, 
caught with a handkerchief on her person, woven 
on the looms of a company whose directors are 
dealing with the British government, can hardly 
claim exemption from suspicion, because she 
bought the handkerchief in America. We all 
know that when London sniflOies the value of 
handkerchiefs goes up in New York. Ccesar's 
wife finds it difficult to persuade honorable 
men that she merely had a financial cold, 
but not the smallest interest in a corner in 
handkerchiefs. 

In the great majority of German cities public- 
utility services, gas, water, electricity, street- 
railways, slaughter-houses, and even canals, 
docks, and pawn-shops are owned and controlled 
by the cities themselves. There is no loop-hole 
for private plunder, and there is, on the contrary, 
every incentive to all citizens, and to the rich in 



222 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

particular, to enforce the strictest economy and 
the most expert efficiency. 

What theatres, opera-houses, orchestras, mu- 
seums, what well-paved and clean streets, what 
parks Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and 
San Francisco might have, had these cities only 
a part of the money, of which in the last twenty- 
five years they have been robbed ! It is true that 
the older cities of Germany have traditions be- 
hind them that we lack. Art treasures, old build- 
ings, and an intelligent population demanding 
the best in music and the drama we cannot hope 
to supply, but good house-keeping is another 
matter. Berlin, for example, is a new city as 
compared with New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
and Detroit, and its growth has been very rapid. 

It cannot be said for us alone that we have 
grown so fast that we have had no time to keep 
pace with the needs of our population. Berlin, 
all Germany indeed, has been growing at a pro- 
digious rate. The population of Berlin in 1800 
was 100,000; in 1832 only 250,000; hardly half a 
million in 1870; while the population now is over 
2,000,000, and over 3,000,000 if one includes the 
suburbs, which are for all practical purposes part 
and parcel of Berlin. Charlottenburg, for ex- 
ample, with a population of 19,517 in 1871, now 
has a population of 305,976, and the vicinage of 



BERLIN 223 

Berlin has grown in every direction in like pro- 
portions. 

There were no towns in Germany till the 
eig'lith century, except those of the Romans on 
the Rhine and the Danube. In 1850 there were 
only 5 towns in Germany with more than 100,000 
inhabitants, and in 1870 only 8; in 1890, 20; in 
1900, 33; in 1905, 41; in 1910, 47; and nearly the 
whole increase of population is now massed in the 
middle-sized and large cij:ies. The same may be 
said of the drift of population in America. "A 
thrifty but rather unprogressive provincial town 
of 60,000 inhabitants," writes Mr. J. H. Harper, 
of New York, in 1810. 

Between 1860 and 1900 the proportion of ur- 
ban to rural population in the United States more 
than doubled. In the last ten years the per- 
centage of people living in cities, or other incorpo- 
rated places of more than 2,500 inhabitants, in- 
creased from 40.5 to 46.3 per cent, of the total; 
while twenty years ago only 36.1 per cent, of the 
population lived in such incorporated places. 

As late as the thirteenth century the Christian 
chivalry of the time was spending itself in the 
task of converting the heathen of what is now 
Prussia; and it was well on into the nineteenth 
century before serfdom was entirely abolished in 
this rcirion. It is the newness and rawness of 



224 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the population, in the streets of the great German 
and Prussian capital which surprise and puzzle 
the American, almost more than the cleanliness 
and orderliness of the streets themselves. It is 
as though a powerful monarch had built a fine 
palace and then, for lack of company, had invited 
the people from the fields and farm-yards to be 
his companions therein. 

"Jamais un lourdaud, quoi qu'il fasse 
Ne saurait passer pour galaud." 

One should read Hazlitt's "Essay on the Cock- 
ney" to find phrases for these Berliners. It is a 
gazing, gaping crowd that straggles along over 
the broad sidewalks. Half a dozen to a dozen 
will stop and stare at people entering or leaving 
vehicles, at a shop, or hotel door. I have seen a 
knot of men stop and stare at the ladies entering 
a motor-car, and on one occasion one of them 
wiped off the glass with his hand that he might 
see the better. It is not impertinence, it is merely 
bucolic naivete. The city in the evening is like 
a country fair, with its awkward gallantries, 
its brute curiosity, its unabashed expressions of 
affection by hands and lips, its ogling, coughing, 
and other peasant forms of flirtation. It should 
be remembered that this people as a race show 
somewhat less of reticence in matters amatory 



BERLIN 225 

than we are accustomed to. In the foyer of the 
theatre you may see a young officer walking 
round and round, his arm under that of his 
fiancee or bride, and her hand fondly clasped in 
his. It is a commentary, not a criticism, on 
international manners that the German royal 
princess, a particularly sweet and simple maiden, 
just engaged to marry the heir of the house 
of Cumberland, is photographed walking in the 
streets of Berlin, her hand clasped in that of her 
betrothed, and both he, and her brother who ac- 
companies them, smoking! Gentlemen do not 
smoke when walking or driving with ladies, with 
us, though I am not claiming that it is a moral 
disaster to do so. It is a difference in the 
gradations of respect worth noting, but noth- 
ing more. I have even seen kissing, as a couple 
walked up the stairs from one part of the theatre 
to another. In the spring and summer the paths 
of the Tiergarten of a morning are strewn with 
hair-pins, a curious, but none the less accurate, 
indication of the rather fumbling affection of the 
night before. 

To live in a fashionable hotel, in a land whose 
people you wish to study, is as valueless an ex- 
perience as to go to a zoological garden to learn 
to track a mountain sheep or to ride down a wild 
boar. You must go about among the people 



226 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

themselves, to their restaurants, to their houses, 
if they are good enough to ask you, and to the 
resorts of all kinds that they frequent. 

The manners are better than in my student 
days, but there is still a deal of improvised eating 
and drinking. There is much tucking of nap- 
kins under chins that the person may be shielded 
from misdirected food-offerings. There is not a 
little use of the knife where the fork or spoon is 
called for; but this last I always look upon as a 
remnant of courage, of the virility remaining in 
the race from a not distant time when the knife 
served to clear the forest, to build the hut, to kill 
the deer, and to defend the family from the woK; 
and the traditions of such a weapon still give it 
predominance over the more epicene fork, as a 
link with a stirring past. Mere daintiness in 
feeding is characteristic of the lapdog and other 
over-protected animals. Unthinking courage in 
the matter of victuals is rather a relief from 
the strained and anxious hygienic watchfulness 
of the overcivilized and the overrich. The 
body should be, and is, regarded by wholesome- 
minded people, not as an idol, but as an in- 
strument. The German no doubt sees some- 
thing ignominious in counting as one chews a 
chop, in the careful measuring of one's liquids, 
in the restricting of oneself to the diet of the 



BERLIN 227 

squirrel and the cow. lie would perhaps prefer 
to lose a year or two of life rather than to nut 
and spinaeh liimself to longevity. The whole- 
some body ouglit of course to be unerring and 
automatic in its choice of the quantity and 
quality of its fuel. 

A well-dressed man in Berlin is almost as con- 
spicuous as a dancing bear. This comparison 
may lead the stranger to infer, in spite of what 
has been said of the orderliness of Berlin, that 
dancing bears are permitted in the streets. It is 
only fair to Berlin's admirable police president, 
von Jagow, to say that they are not. 

If one leaves the officers, who are a fine, up- 
standing, well-groomed lot, out of the* account, 
the inhabitants of Berlin are almost grotesque in 
their dowdiness. This is the more remarkable 
for the reason that the citizens of Berlin, wher- 
ever you see them, not only in the West-end, but 
in the tenement districts, in the public markets, 
going to or coming from the suburban trains, in 
the trams and underground railway, in the 
cheaper restaurants and pleasure resorts, taking 
their Sunday outing, or in the fourth-class car- 
riages of the railway trains, or their children in 
the schools, show a high level of comfort in their 
clothing. There is poverty and wretchedness in 
Berlin, of which later, but in no great city even 



228 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in America, does the mass of the people give such 
an air of being comfortably clothed and fed. 

We have been deluged of late years with figures 
in regard to the cost of living in this country and 
in that, and never are statistics such "damned 
lies" as in this connection. There is better and 
cheaper food in Berlin, and in the other cities of 
Germany, than anywhere else in our white man's 
world. Having for the moment no free-trade, or 
protectionist, or tariff-reform axe to grind, and 
having tested the pudding not by my prejudices 
but my palate, and having eaten a fifteen-pfen- 
nig luncheon in the street, and climbed step by 
step the gastronomical stairway in Germany all 
the way up to a supper at the court, where eight 
hundred odd people were served with a care and 
celerity, and with hot viands and irreproachable 
potables, that made one think of the "Arabian 
Nights," I offer my experience and my opinion 
with some confidence. You can get enough to 
stave off hunger for a few pfennigs, you can get a 
meal for something under twenty -five cents, and 
the whole twenty-five cents will include a glass 
of the best beer in the world outside of Munich. 
If you care to spend fifty cents there are countless 
restaurants where you can have a square meal 
and a glass of beer for that price ; and for a dollar 
I will give you as good a luncheon with wine as 



BERLIN 229 

any man witli undamaged taste and unspoiled 
digestion ouglil lo have. 

There is one restaurant in Berlin which feeds 
as many as five thousand people on a Sunday, 
where you can dine or sup, and listen to good 
music, and enjoy your beer and tobacco for an 
hour afterward, and all for something under fifty 
cents if you are careful in your ordering. During 
my walks in the country around Berlin, I have 
often had an omelette followed by meat and 
vegetables, and cheese, and compote, and Rhine 
wine, with all the bread I wanted, and paid a bill 
for two persons of a little over a dollar. The 
Brodchen, or rolls, seem to be everywhere of uni- 
form size and quality, and the butter always 
good. 

Paris is fast losing its place as the home of 
good all-round eating as compared with Berlin. 
Of course, New York for geographical reasons, 
and also because the modern Maecenas lives 
there, is nowadays the place where Lucullus 
would invite his emperor to dine if he came back 
to earth; but I am not discussing the nectar and 
ambrosia classes, but the beer, bread, and pork 
classes, and (HM-laiiily Berlin has no rival as a 
provider for them. 

After all our study of statistics, of figures, of 
contrasts, T am iiol sure that wr arri\-o at anv 



230 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS; 

very valuable conclusions. American working- 
classes work ever shorter hours, gain higher 
wages, but they are indubitably less happy, less 
rich in experience, less serene than the Germans. 
This measuring things by dollars, by hours, by 
pounds and yard-sticks, measures everything ac- 
curately enough except the one thing we wish to 
measure, which is a man's soul. We are pro- 
ducing the material things of life faster, more 
cheaply, more shoddily, but it is open to ques- 
tion whether we are producing happier men and 
women, and that is what we are striving to do 
as the end of it all. Nothing is of any value in 
the world that cannot be translated into the terms 
of man-making, or its value measured by what 
it does to produce a man, a woman, and children 
living happily together. Wealth does not do 
this; indeed, wealth beyond a certain limit is 
almost certain to destroy the foundation of all 
peace, a contented family. 

A shady beer-garden, capital music, and happy 
fathers and mothers and children, what arith- 
metic, or algebra, or census tells you anything of 
that? The infallible recipe for making a child 
unhappy, is to give it everything it cries for of 
material things, and never to thwart its will. 
We throw wages and shorter hours of work at 
people, but that is only turning them out of prison 



BERLIN 231 

inlo a desert. No statistics can deal compe- 
tently with tlie comparative well-being of nations, 
and nothing is more ludicrous than the results 
arrived at where Germany is discussed by the 
British or American politician. Whatever fig- 
ures say, and whatever else they may lack, they 
are better clothed, better fed and cared for, and 
have far more opportunities for rational enjoj^- 
ment, and a thousand-fold more for aesthetic en- 
joyment, than either the English or the Ameri- 
cans. That they lack freedom, in our sense, is 
true, l)ut freedom is for the few. The world- 
wide complaint of the hardship of constant work 
is rather silly, for most of us would die of mo- 
notony if we were not forced to work to keep 
alive, and to make a living. 

The city, with its broad, clean streets, its beau- 
tiful race-course, shaded walks, its forests and 
lakes, toward Potsdam, or at Tegel, or Werder, 
when the blossoms are out, with its well-kept 
gardens, its profusion of flowers and shrubs and 
trees, is physically the most wholesome great 
cily in the world; but Hans hlciht immcr Hans! 
Goethe, after a visit to Berlin, wrote: ''There are 
no more ungodly communities than in Berlin."' 

No one knows his Berlin better than that 
prince of German literary Bohemians, Paul Lin- 

• "Est giobl kciuc golllosorc Viilkcr ills in Berlin." 



232 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

dau, and he makes a character in one of his 
novels say of it: "untidy and orderly, so boister- 
ous and so regulated, so boorish and so kindly, 
so indescribable — so Berlinish — just that!" ^ 

In another place the same author writes: "Ber- 
lin as the Capital of the German Empire ! There 
are many respects in which it nevertheless hasn't 
yet succeeded in taking on the character of a cos- 
mopolitan city." 2 Not even literature finds 
material for a city novel. There is no Balzac, 
no Thackeray. Germany is still dominated by 
the village and the town. Goethe, Auerbach, 
Spielhagen, Heyse, Gottfried Keller, Freytag, 
my unread favorite "Fritz" Renter, deal not 
with the life of cities. There is as yet no drama, 
no novel, no art, no politics born of the city. 
There is no domineering Paris or London or 
New York as yet. 

After some years of acquaintance with Ger- 
many as school-boy, as student at the universi- 
ties, and lately as a most hospitably received 
guest by all sorts and conditions of men, I do not 
remember meeting a fop. A German Beau 
Brummel is as impossible as a French Luther, 

^ "Staubig und ordentlich, so laut und geregelt, so grob und gemiit- 
lich, so unbeschreiblich, so berlinerisch, gerade so!" 

2 "Berlin als Haupstadt des deutchen Reiches: in mancber Bezie- 
hung hatte es sich dem weltstadtischen Charakter doch noch nicht 
aneignen kbnnen." 



BERLIN 233 

an American Goethe, or an English Wugncr. 
We have had attempts at foppery in America, 
but no real foi)s. A genuine fop, whether in art, 
in literature, or in costumes, must have brains, 
ours have been merely edigies, foppery taking 
the dull connnercial form of a great variety of rai- 
ment. It is a strange contradiction in German 
life that while they are as a people governed 
minutely and in detail, forbidden personal free- 
dom along certain lines to which w^e should find 
it hard to submit, they are freer morally, freer 
in their literature, their art, their music, their 
social life, and in their unself -conscious expression 
of them than other people. There is a curious 
combination of legal and governmental slavery, 
and of spiritual and intellectual freedom; of in- 
numerable restrictions, and great liberty of per- 
sonal enjoyment, and that enjoyment of the 
most naif kind. They seem to have done less 
to destroy life's palate with the condiments of 
civilization, and therefore, still find plain things 
savorous. 

I am not sure that the ecumenical sophistica- 
tion, known as world-etiquette, marks a very high 
degree of knowledge or usefulness anywhere. 
To know wliicli linl i^oes witli which boots, and 
what collar and tie with what coat and waistcoat, 
and what costume is appropriate at 10 a. m.. 



234 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and what at 10 p. m., and to know the names of 
the head-waiters of the principal restaurants, 
are minor matters. These are the conveniences 
of the gentleman, but the characteristic bur- 
dens of the ass. Such a mental equipment is 
not the stuff of which soldiers, sailors, states- 
men, explorers, or governors are made. 

We must not overrate the value of this femi- 
nine worldliness in judging the Germans. This 
effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette has 
not influenced them greatly as yet. But on the 
other hand, one must claim for the amenities of 
life that they have their value, that they are, after 
all, the external decorations of an inward disci- 
pline. It is not necessarily a fine disdain of mate- 
rial things, but rather a keen sense of moral and 
physical efficiency, which pays due heed to where- 
withal ye shall be clothed, at any rate outside of 
Palestine. Those who dream and discuss may 
wear anything or nothing. It mattered not what 
Socrates wore. But men of action must wear 
the easy armor that fits them best for their par- 
ticular task. Men who toil either at their pleas- 
ure or at their work must change their raiment, 
if only for the sake of rest and health. Now that 
government is in the hands of the vociferators 
rather than the meditaters, even politicians must 
look to their costumes, merely out of regard to 



BERLIN 2^5.5 

cleanliness. Evening clothes with a knitted tie 
dribbling down the shirt front; a frock-coat as a 
frame for a colored waistcoat, such as at shoot- 
ing, or riding, or golf, we permit ourselves to 
break forth in, as a weak surrender to the tailor, 
or to the ingenuity of our womenfolk who are 
not ''unbred to spinning, in the loom unskilled"; 
the extraordinary indulgence in personal fancies 
in the choice of colored ties, as though the male 
citizens of Berlin had been to an auction of the 
bastards of a rainbow; the little melon-shaped 
hats with a band of thick velvet around them; 
the awkward slouching gait, as of men physically 
untrained; the enormous proportion of men over 
forty, W'ho follow behind their stomachs and 
turn their toes out at an angle of more than 
forty -five degrees, whose necks lie in folds over 
their collars, and whose whole appearance de- 
notes an uncared-for person and a negligence of 
domestic hygiene: these things are significant. 
No man who walks with his toes pointing south- 
west by south, and southeast by south, when he is 
going south, will ever get into France on his 
own feet, carrying a knapsack and a rifle. Cra- 
nach's painting of Duke Henry the Pious, in the 
Dresden Gallery, gives an accurate picture of the 
way many Germans still stand and walk; while 
every athlete knows that runners and walkers put 



236 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

their feet down straight, or with a tendency to 
turn them in rather than out. The Indians of 
northwest India, and the Indians of our own West 
are good examples of this. 

It is evident that the orderhness of Berhn is 
enforced orderhness and not voluntary orderli- 
ness. Both pedestrians and drivers of all sorts of 
vehicles, take all that is theirs and as much more 
as possible. There is none of the give and take, 
and innate love of fair play and instinctive wish 
to give the other fellow a chance, so noticeable 
in London streets, whether on the sidewalks or 
in the roadway. There is a general chip-on-the- 
shoulder attitude in Prussia, which may be said, 
I think not unfairly, to be evident in all ranks, 
from their recent foreign diplomacy, down to the 
pedestrians and drivers. 

Many people whom I have met, not only for- 
eigners but Germans from other parts of Ger- 
many, are loud in their denunciations of the Ber- 
liners. "Freeh" and "roh" are words often 
used about them. There is a surly malice of 
speech and manner among the working classes, 
that seems to indicate a wish to atone for po- 
litical impotence, by braggart impudence to 
those whom they regard as superior. When 
we played horse as children, we champed the 
wooden bit, shied, and balked and kicked, and 



BERLIN 237 

the worse we behaved the more spirited horses 
we thought ourselves. There is a certain social 
and polilical radicalism verging upon anarchy, 
which plays aL life in much the same way, with 
no better reason, and with little better result. 
Shying, balking, and kicking, and champing the 
political bit, are only spirited to the childish. 

Their awkward and annoying attentions to 
women alone on the streets; their staring and 
gaping; their rudeness in pushing and shoving; 
the general underbred look, the slouching gait, 
the country-store clothes, hats, and boots; the 
fearful and w^onderful combinations of raiment; 
the sweetbread complexions, as of men under- 
exercised and not sufficiently aired and scrubbed; 
their stiff courtesy to one another when they 
recognize acquaintances with hat-sweeping bows; 
their fierce gobbling in the restaurants; their lack 
of small services and attentions to their own 
women when they go about in public with them; 
their selfish disregard of others in public places, 
their giving and taking of hats, coats, sticks, and 
umbrellas at the garde-robes of the theatres, for 
example; their hal)it of straggling about in the 
middle of the streets, like the chickens and geese 
on a country road: all these things I have noted 
too, but I must admit the surprising personal 
conclusion that I have grown to like the people. 



238 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

A good pair of shoulders and an engaging smile 
go far to mitigate these nuisances. It makes for 
good sense in this matter of criticism always to 
bear in mind that delicious piece of humor of 
the psalmist: "Let the righteous rather smite me 
friendly; and reprove me. But let not their 
precious balms break my head." The "precious 
balms" of the lofty and righteous critic are not 
of much value when they merely break heads. 

I have been all over Berlin, and in all sorts of 
places, by day and by night. I have found my- 
self seated beside all sorts of people in restau- 
rants and public places, and I have yet to chron- 
icle any rudeness to me or mine. I like their 
innocent curiosity, their unsophisticated ways, 
their bumpkin love-making in public; and many 
a time I have found entertainment from odd 
companions who seated themselves near me, 
when I have strayed into the cheaper restau- 
rants, to hear and to see something of the Ber- 
liner in his native wilds. Their malice and rude- 
ness and apparent impertinences are due to lack 
of experience, to the fact that their manners are 
still untilled, I believe, rather than to intentional 
insult. They are not house-broken to their new 
capital, that is all, and that will come in time. 
Their malicious jealousy peeps out in all sorts of 
ways. In the lower house of the Prussian Diet, 



BERLIN 239 

recently, a member protested vigorously against 
the employment of an American singer in the 
Opera House! Chauvinism carried to this ex- 
treme becomes comic, and is noted here only to 
indicate to what depths of farm-yard provin- 
ciality some of the citizens of this great city can 
descend. 

They are dreamers and sentimentalists too. 
There are more kissing, more fondling, more 
exuberance of affection, more displays of friend- 
liness in Germany in a week than in England and 
America in six months. I confess without shame 
that I like to see it, and when it comes my way, 
as beyond my deserts it has, I like to feel it. 
How lasting is this friendliness I have no means 
of knowing till the years to come tell me, but 
that it is a pleasant atmosphere to live in there 
can be no doubt. 

The driving is of the very worst. A man be- 
hind a horsCj or horses, who knows even the ele- 
ments of handling the reins and the whip and 
the brake, would be a curiosity indeed. I have 
not seen a dozen coachmen, private or public, 
to whom my youngest child could not have given 
invaluable suggestions as to the bitting, har- 
nessing, and 1 Kindling of his cattle. On the other 
hand, I one day saw a street sign twisted out of 
its place. I was fascinated by this unexampled 



MO GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

mark of negligence. I determined to watch that 
sign; alas, within forty-eight hours it was put 
right again. 

Let it not be understood that there are no fine 
horses to be seen in Berlin. You will go far to 
find a better lot of horse-flesh, or better-looking 
men on the horses, than you will see when the 
Kaiser rides by to the castle after his morning 
exercise; and he sits his horse and manages him 
with the easy skill of the real horseman, and looks 
every inch a king besides. It is told of Daniel 
Webster, walking in London, that a navvy 
turned to his companion and remarked: "That 
bloke must be a king ! " You would say the same 
of the Kaiser if you saw him on horseback. 

At horse shows and in the Tiergarten, and in 
riding-places in other cities, I have looked at 
hundreds of horses, and, if I mistake not, Ger- 
many is both buying and breeding the very best 
in the way of mounts, though their civilian riders 
are often of the scissors variety. There are com- 
paratively few harness horses, and in Berlin 
scarcely a dozen well-turned-out private car- 
riages, outside the imperial equipages, which are 
always superbly horsed and beautifully turned 
out; so my eyes tell me at least, and I have 
watched the streets carefully for months. The 
minor details of a properly turned-out carriage 



BERLIN 241 

(bits, chains, liveries, saddle-cloths, and so on) 
are still unknown here. I have had the privilege 
of driving and riding some of the horses in the 
imperial stables; and I have seen all of them at 
one time or another being exercised in harness 
and under the saddle. I have never driven a 
better-mannered four, or ridden more perfectly 
broken saddle-horses. There are three hundred 
and twenty-six horses in his Majesty's stables, 
and for a private stable of its size it has no equal 
in the world. I may add, too, that there is 
probably no better "whip" in the world to-day, 
whether with two horses, four horses, or six 
horses, than the gentleman who trains the har- 
ness horses in the imjierial stables. This German 
coachman would be a revelation at a horse show 
in either New York or London. If the citizens 
of Berlin were as well-mannered as the horses 
in the imperial stables, this would be the most 
elegant capital in the world. It is to be re- 
gretted that his Majesty's very accomplished 
master of the horse cannot also hold the position 
of censor morum to the citizens of Berlin. In- 
dividual 2)n)wess in I lie details of cosmopolitan 
etiquette has not reached a high level, but in all 
matters of mere house-keeping there are no bet- 
ter municipal housewives than these German 
cities and towns. 



242 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

As a further example, the statues of Berhn are 
carefully cleaned In the spring, but what statues ! 
With the exception of the Lessing, the Goethe, 
and the Great Elector statues, the statue of 
Frederick the Great, and the reclining statues 
of the late emperor and empress, by Begas, and 
one or two others, one sees at once that these 
citizens are no more capable of ornamenting 
their city than of dressing themselves. 

Poor Bismarck! Grotesque figures (men, 
women, animals) surround the base of his statue 
in Berlin, in Leipsic; and in Hamburg, clad in 
a corrugated golf costume, with a colossal two- 
handed sword in front of him, he is a melancholy 
figure, gazing out over a tumble-down beer-gar- 
den. At Wannsee, near Berlin, there is, I must 
admit, a really fine bust of Bismarck. On a 
solid square pedestal of granite, covered with 
ivy and surrounded by the whispering, or sigh- 
ing, or creaking and cracking trees that he loved, 
and facing the setting sun, and alone In a se- 
cluded corner, just the place he would have 
chosen, there are the head and shoulders of the 
real Bismarck. Here for once he has escaped the 
fussy attentions of the artistry that he detested. 
Lehnbach, who painted Bismarck so many scores 
of times, never gave him the color that his face 
kept all through life, and with the exception of 



BERLIN 243 

this bust, of the scores of Bismarck memorials 
one sees all commiserate the lack of arlist 
ability; they do not commemorate Bismarck. 
If this is what they do to the greatest man in 
their history, what is to be expected elsewhere? 
What has poor Joachim Friedrich done that he 
should pose forever in the Sieges Alice as an in- 
toxicated hitching-post? What, indeed, have 
his companions done that they should stand in 
two rows there, studies in contortion, with a 
gilded Russian dancer with wings at one end of 
their line, and a woodeny Roland at the other? 
But there they are, simpering a paltry patriot- 
ism, insipid as history and ridiculous as art. 
What has become of Lessing, and Winckelmann, 
and Goethe, and their teachings? Is this the 
price that a nation must pay for its industrial 
progress? 

The German, with all his boasting about the 
"centre of culture," has not discovered that the 
beauty of antiquity is the expression of those vir- 
tues which were useful at the time of Theseus, 
as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, 
which was everything of old, amounts to almost 
nothing in our modern civilization. The monk 
who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; 
strength is only necessary now among subalterns. 
No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the 



244 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The 
strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon 
advancing alone upon the First Battalion of the 
royal troops near Lake Loffrey in March, 1815; 
that is strength of soul. The moral qualities 
with which we are concerned are no longer the 
same as in the days of the Greeks. Before this 
cockney sculpture was planned, there should 
have been a closer study of the history and phi- 
losophy of art in Berlin. 

It is true that we in America are living in a 
glass house to some extent in these matters, but 
where in all Germany is there any modern 
sculpture to compare with our Nathan Hale, our 
Minute Man, and that most spirited bit of mod- 
ern plastic art in all the world, the Shaw Monu- 
ment in Boston? You cannot stand in front of 
it without keeping time, and her^ lips of bronze 
sing the song of patriotism till your heart 
thumps, and you are ready to throw up your hat 
as the splendid young figure and his negro sol- 
diers march by — and they do march by ! It is 
almost a consolation for what Boston has done to 
that gallant soldier and humble servant of God, 
that modest gentleman, Phillips Brooks. In a 
statue to him they have travestied the virtues he 
expounded, slain the ideal of the Christ he 
preached, theatricalized the least theatrical of 



BERLIN 245 

men, and placed this piece of mortifying mis- 
understanding in bronze under the very eaves of 
tlic house that grew out of his simple eloquence. 
There is in Lcipsic a similar misdemeanor in a 
statue of Beethoven. He sits, naked to the waist, 
in a bronze chair, with a sort of bath-towel 
drapery of colored marble about his legs, and an 
eagle in front of him. He has a chauffeurish ex- 
pression of anxious futility, as though he were 
about to run over the eagle. 

Men are without great dreams in these days, 
and art is elaborate and fussy and self-conscious. 
The technical part of the work is predominant. 
One sees the artist holding up a mirror to him- 
self as he works. Pygmalion congratulates the 
statue upon the fact that he carved it, instead of 
being lost in the love of creating. It is as though 
a lover should sing of himself instead of singing of 
his lady. The subtle poison of self-advertisement 
has crept in, and peers like a satyr from the pict- 
ure and from the statue. Even the most prom- 
inent name in German music at this writing is 
that of a man who is notorious as an expert sales- 
man of symphonic sensationalism. 

Though the streets are so well kept, the build- 
ings in these miles of new streets are flimsy-look- 
ing, and evidently the work of the speculative 
builder. The more pretentious buildings ape a 



246 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

kind of Nuremberg Renaissance style, and are as 
effective as a castle made of cardboard. This 
does not imply that there are not simple and 
solid buildings in Berlin and, in the case of the 
new library and a score of other buildings, wor- 
thy architecture; but the general impression is 
one of haste multiplied by plaster. 

The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a 
cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough 
flowers and feathers on her Sunday hat. A cer- 
tain comic anthropomorphism is to be seen, even 
on the balustrades of the castle, where the good 
Emperor William is posed as Jupiter, the Em- 
press Augusta as Juno, Emperor Frederick as 
Mars, and his wife as Minerva! On the fagades 
of houses, on the bridges, on the roofs of apart- 
ment houses, on the hotels even, and scattered 
throughout the public gardens, are scores of 
statues, and they are for the most part what 
hastily ordered, swiftly completed art, born of 
the dollar instead of the pain and travail of love 
and imagination, must always be. 

A certain literary snob taken to task by Doc- 
tor Parr for pronouncing the one-time capital of 
Egypt "Alexandria," with the accent on the 
long i, quoted the authority of Doctor Bentley. 
"Doctor Bentley and I," replied Doctor Parr, 
"may call it 'Alexandria,' but I should advise 



BERLIN 247 

you to call it ' Alexandria.' " It was all very well 
for the Medici, to ornament their cities and their 
homes with the fruit of the great artistic spring- 
time of the world, but I should strongly advise 
the Berliners to pronounce it "Alexandria" for 
some years to come. No matter how fervid the 
lover, nor how possessed he may be by his mis- 
tress, he cannot turn out every day, even, 

"A halting sonnet of his own poor brain, 
Fashion'd to Beatrice." 

All this pretentious over-ornamentation is cos- 
meticism, the powder and paint of the vulgarian 
striving to conceal by a futile advertisement her 
lack of refinement. Paris was teaching the 
world when there was no capital in Germany; 
London has been a commercial centre for a 
thousand years, and Oxford was a hundred years 
old before even the University of Prague, the 
first in Germany, was founded by Charles IV in 
1348. You may like or dislike these cities, but, 
at any rate, they have a bouquet; Berlin has 
none. 

AVlicn Germany deals with the inanimate and 
amenable factors of life, she brings the machinery 
of modern civilization wdl-nigh to the point of 
perfection. As a municipal and national house- 
wife she has no equal, none. But art has noth- 



248 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing to do with brooms and dust-pans, and 
human nature is woven of surprises and emer- 
gencies, and what then? An interesting example 
in the streets of Berhn is the difference between 
the perfection of the street-cleaning, which deals 
with the inanimate and with accurately cal- 
culable factors, and the governing of the street 
traffic. Horses and men and motor-driven ve- 
hicles are not as dependable as blocks of pave- 
ment. When the traffic in the Berlin streets 
grows to the proportions of London, Paris, and 
New York, one wonders what will happen. No- 
where are there such broad, well-kept streets in 
which the traffic is so awkwardly handled. 

The police are all, and must be, indeed, non- 
commissioned officers of the army, of nine years' 
service, and not over thirty-five years of age. 
They are armed with swords and pistols by night, 
and in the rougher parts of the town with the 
same weapons by day as well. After ten years' 
service they are entitled to a pension of twenty- 
sixtieths of their pay, with an increase of one- 
sixtieth for each further year of service. They 
are not under the city, but under state control, 
and the chief of police is a man of distinction, 
nearly always a nobleman, and nominated by, 
and in every case approved by, the Emperor. 
In Berlin he is appointed by the King of Prussiao 



BERLIN 249 

He is a man of such standing that he may be 
promoted lo cnhinot rank. The men arc well- 
turned out, of heavy build, very courteous to 
strangers, so far as my experience can speak for 
them, and quiet and self -controlled. Under the 
police president are one colonel of police, re- 
ceiving from G,000 to 8,500 marks, according to 
his length of service; 3 majors, receiving from 
5,400 to 0,(J00 marks; 20 captains, receiving from 
4,200 to 5,400 marks; 150 lieutenants, receiving 
from 3,000 to 4,500 marks; 450 sergeants, re- 
ceiving from 1,050 to 2,300 marks; and 5,382 
patrolmen, receiving from 1,400 to 2,100 marks. 
There are also some 300 mounted police, re- 
ceiving from 1,400 to 2,000 marks. The colonel, 
majors, and captains receive 1,300 marks addi- 
tional, and the lieutenants 800 marks additional, 
for house rent. The mounted police are well- 
horsed, but it is no slight to them to say, how- 
ever, that their horses are not so well trained 
and well mannered, nor the men such skilful 
horsemen, as those of our mounted squad in New 
York, who, man for man and horse for horse, are 
probably unequalled anywhere else in the world. 
The demand for these non-commissioned offi- 
cers of nine years of army discipline, who cannot 
be called upon to serve in the army again, has 
grown with the growth of the great city, with its 



250 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

need of porters, watchmen, and the Hke, and so 
valuable are their services deemed that the pres- 
ent police force of Berlin is short of its proper 
number by some seven hundred men. 

The examination of those about to become 
policemen extends over four weeks, and includes 
every detail of the multiplicity of duties, which 
ranges from the protection of the public from 
crime, down to tracking down truants from 
school, and the regulation of the books of the 
maid-servant class. The policeman who aspires 
to the rank of sergeant undergoes a still more 
rigorous examination, extending over twenty 
weeks of preparation, during which time he 
studies — note this hst, ye "young barbarians all 
at play," German, rhetoric, writing, arithmetic, 
common fractions, geography, history, especially 
the history of the House of Hohenzollern from 
the time of the margraves to the present time ( !), 
poHtical divisions of the earth, especially of 
Prussia and Germany, the essential features of 
the constitution of the Prussian Kingdom and 
German Empire, the organization and working of 
the various state authorities in Prussia and Ger- 
many, elementary methods of disinfection, com- 
mon veterinary remedies, the police law as ap- 
plicable to innumerable matters from the treat- 
ment of the drunk, blind, and lame, to evidences 



BERLIN 251 

of murder, and the press law. The man who 
passes such an examination would be more than 
qualified to take a degree, at one of our minor 
colleges, if he knew English and the classics 
were not required, and could well afford to sniff 
disdainfully at the pelting shower of honorary- 
degrees of Doctor of Divinity, which descend 
from the commencement platforms of our more 
girlish intellectual factories of orthodoxy. 

The cost of the police in Berlin in 1880 was 
2,494,722 marks; in 1890, 3,007,879 marks; in 
1900, 6,065,975 marks; and in 1910, 8,708,165 
marks. 

I fancy that after an accident has taken place 
the literary, legal, and hygienic details are cared 
for by the Berlin police as nowhere else. In their 
management of the traffic they are distinctly 
lacking in decision and watchfulness. On the 
western side of the Brandenburger Tor there is 
seldom an hour, without a tangle of traffic which 
is entirely unnecessary if the police knew their 
business. On the Tiergarten Strasse, a rather 
narrow and much used thoroughfare in the fash- 
ionable part of the town, trucks, cabs, and other 
vehicles are not kept close to the curbs, often 
they drive along in pairs, slowing up all the 
traffic, and at the east end of the street is a cor- 
ner which could easily be remedied by the build- 



252 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing of a "refuge," and an authoritative police- 
man to guard the three approaches. Not once, 
but scores of times, at the very important corner 
of Unter den Linden and Wilhelm Strasse I have 
seen the pohceman talking to friends on the curb, 
quite oblivious to a scramble of cabs, wagons, 
and motors at cross purposes in the street. Pots- 
damer Platz presents a difficult problem at all 
times of the day, especially when the crowds are 
coming from or going toward home, but a few 
ropes and iron standards, and four alert Irish 
policemen, would make it far plainer sailing than 
now it is. It is to be remembered, too, that the 
traffic is a mere dribble as compared to a tor- 
rent, when one remembers Paris, New York, and 
London. In 1909 the street accidents in Paris 
numbered 65,870, and there was one summons 
for every 77 motor taxicabs, but Paris is now 
without a rival as the dirtiest, worst-paved cap- 
ital in Europe, and the home of social anarchy; 
a place where adventurous spirits will go soon 
rather than to Africa, or to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, for excitement in affrays with revolvers, 
vitriol, and chloroform. 

In London, in 1909, there were 13,388 acci- 
dents. In Berlin there was a total of 4,895 ac- 
cidents in 1900; 4,797 in 1905; and 4,233 in 1910. 
One hundred persons were killed in 1900; 115 in 



BERLIN 253 

1905; and 1.'50 in 1010. In Ihis connection it is 
to be said, that Berlin has fewer and niiicli less 
adventurous inhabitants, very much less com- 
plicated traffic, much broader and better streets, 
and far fewer problems than the older cities. If 
the citizens of Berlin were anything like as capa- 
ble of taking care of themselves in the streets, as 
they should be, there would be hardly any acci- 
dents at all. The new police regulation of the 
traffic has been only some four or five years in 
existence in its more rigid form, and perhaps 
neither people nor police are accustomed to it. 
Even then, out of the total of 4,233 accidents in 
1910, 1,876 of them were caused by the street- 
railway cars. Tliis shows of itself how light the 
traffic must be, for worse driving and more awk- 
ward pedestrians one would go far to find. 

The cost of Berlin housekeeping increases by 
leaps and bounds. The total city expenses were: 
45,221,988 marks in 1880; 89,364,270 in 1890; 
121,405,356 in 1900; and 355,424,614 in 1910. 
The debt of Berlin has risen from 120,161,005 
marks in 1880, and 272,912,350 in 1900, to 475,- 
799,231 in 1910, with a very consideral^le addi- 
tion voted for 1912. In the ten years alone be- 
tween 1897 and 1907 the debt of German cities 
including only ihoso with a population of more 
than 10,000, increased by $1,050,000,000. :\Iu- 



254 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

nicipal expenditure in Paris has risen in the last 
ten years from $59,200,000 to $76,000,000. 
The budget expenditure of France has reached 
$1 ,040,000,000. In 1898 it was only $600,000,000. 

It cannot be expected that the best-kept, 
cleanest, and most orderly cities in the world, and 
there need be no hesitation in saying this of the 
German cities, should not spend much money, 
and the states in which they are situated much 
money as well. The various states of the em- 
pire spent, according to a report of four years 
ago, $1,352,500,000; and the empire itself $738,- 
250,000, or a total of $2,090,750,000. From the 
various state or empire controlled enterprises, 
such as railways, forests, mines, post and tele- 
graph, imperial printing-office, and so on, the 
states and empire received a net income of 
$216,525,000, and the balance was, of course, 
raised by direct and indirect taxation. 

One may put appropriately enough under this 
heading, the invaluable and unpaid services of a 
host of honorary officials, who render expert ser- 
vice both in the state and city governments. 
There are over ten thousand honorary officials 
in the city of Berlin alone, more than three thou- 
sand of whom serve under the school authorities. 
They are chosen from citizens of standing, edu- 
cation, wealth, and ability, and assist in all the 



BERLIN 255 

departments with advice and expert knowledge, 
and sit upon the various committees. The Ger- 
man citizen has not only his pocket taxed, but 
his patriotism also, and a capital philosophy of 
government this implies. 

A friend, a large landholder in Saxony, gives, 
between his services as a reserve officer in the 
army and his magisterial and other duties, some- 
thing over nine weeks of his time to the state 
every year, and he is by no means an exception, 
he tells me. A certain amount of this is required 
of him by the state, with a heavy fine for non- 
performance of these duties. The same is true 
of the many members of the various standing 
committees in the cities. Each citizen is com- 
pelled to contribute a certain proportion of his 
mental and moral prowess to the service of his 
state and city, but he receives a return for it in 
his beautifully kept city, in the educational ad- 
vantages, in the theatres, concerts, opera, and in 
the peaceful orderliness, the value of which only 
the foreigner can full}" appreciate. 

Almost all the court theatres, for example, 
throughout Germany are under a director who 
works in liarmony with the reigning prince. 
The King of Prussia gives for his theatres in Ber- 
lin, Wiesbaden, Hanover, and Cassel, more than 
$025,000 a year from his private purse; the Duke 



^56 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of Anlialt, $75,000 a year to the Dessauer the- 
atre. The players have a sure position under 
responsible and intelligent government, and feel 
themselves to be not mere puppets, but educa- 
tional factors with a certain pride and dignity 
in their work. 

There are more Shakespeare plays given in 
Germany in a week than in all the English-speak- 
ing countries together in a year. This is by no 
means an exaggeration. The theatre is looked 
upon as a school. Fathers and mothers arrange 
that their older children as well as themselves 
shall attend the theatre all through the winter, 
and subscribe for seats as we would subscribe 
to a lending library. During the last year in 
Germany, the plays of Schiller were given 1,584 
times, of Shakespeare 1,042 times, the music- 
dramas of Wagner 1,815 times, the plays of 
Goethe 700 times, and of Hauptmann 600 times. 
There is no spectacular gorgeousness, as when 
an Irving, a Booth, or a Beerbohm Tree sugar- 
coats Shakespeare to induce us barbarians to 
go, in the belief that we are after all not wast- 
ing our time, since the performance tastes a 
little of the more gorgeous music halls. The 
scenery and costumes are sufficient, and the 
performance always worth intelligent attention, 
for the reason that both the director and his 



BERLIN 257 

players have given lime and scholarsliip Lo its 
interpretation. The acting is often indid'erent 
as compared to I he French stage, but it is at 
least always in earnest and intelligent. The 
theatre prices in Berlin are high, even as com- 
pared with New York prices, but in other cities 
and towns of Germany cheaper than in Eng- 
land, France, or America. 

Pericles passed a law in Athens by which each 
citizen was granted two oboli, one to pay for his 
seat at the theatre, the other to provide himself 
with refreshment. In Athens the play began at 
C or 7 A. M., and during the morning three trage- 
dies and a satirical drama were played, followed 
in the afternoon by a comedy. The theatre of 
Dionysius seated 30,000 people, who brought 
their cushions, food, and drink, and occasionally 
used them to express their dislike of the perform- 
ance or the performers. At one of the larger in- 
dustrial towns in Germany, during a Sunday of 
my visit, there were three performances; one at 
11 A. M., of a patriotic melodrama, "Glaube und 
Ileimat"; another, at 3.30 p. m., of "Der Frei- 
schiitz"; and another, at 7.30 p. m., of Suder- 
mann's play, "Die Ehre." The prices of seats 
fur the morning performance ranged from eight 
cents to forty-five cents; a little more in the after- 
noon; and from seventeen cents to sl.l.") in (lie 



258 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

evening. At the performance I attended the 
house was crowded and attentive. I was not 
enough of an Athenian to attend all three. Even 
at the Music Hall in Berlin, where, as in other 
cities, the thinly covered salacious is ladled out 
to the animal man, there was a capital stage cari- 
cature of (Edipus, which atoned for the custom- 
ary etcig Jjegliche, which now rules in these re- 
sorts. If for some untoward reason women 
ceased to have legs, what would the British and 
American theatrical trust managers do! 

The German takes his theatre and his music, 
as from the beginnings of these it was intended 
we all should do. They are not a distraction 
merely, but an education, an education of the 
senses, and through the senses of the whqje man. 
There are music-lovers and serious playgoers in 
America; but for the most part our theatres cater 
to, and are filled by, a public seeking a soothing 
and condimented mental atmosphere, in which to 
finish digestion. Theatrical salmagundi is served 
everywhere, and seems to be the dish best suited 
to the American aesthetic palate as thus far educa- 
ted. We cannot complain, since other wares would 
be quickly provided did we but ask for them. 

America has suffered because she was over- 
taken by a great material prosperity before she 
had a sufficient spiritual and intellectual develop- 



BERLIN 250 

men I, and up to now the material side of life has 
had the upper hand. We buy the best pictures, 
the rare books and manuscripts, armor and silver 
and porcelain, and it must be said that there is a 
fine idealism here, because they are bought al- 
most without exception by uncultured, often 
almost unlettered, rich men, who know nothing 
and care very little for these things, but who 
are providing rare educational opportunities for 
another generation. In 1910 objects of art to 
the value of $22,000,000 were imported, in 1911 
$30,000,000 worth, and in 1912 sixty per cent, 
more than in 1911. In the same way we hire 
the best musicians and singers, but our surround- 
ings and 'the powerful circumambient ambitions, 
have not tempted us as yet to live contentedly 
and understandingly in any such atmosphere as 
the Germans do. It is a striking contrast, per- 
haps of all the contrasts the most interesting to 
the student, this of America growing from in- 
dustrialism toward idealism, of Germany growing 
out of idealism into industrialism. 

Germany floats in music; in America a few, a 
very few, float on it. In Germany everybody 
sings, almost everybody plays some instrument, 
nnd from the youngest to the oldest everybody 
understands music; at least that is the impres- 
sion you carry away with you from the land of 



260 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Brahms, 
and Beethoven, and Wagner, and I might fill the 
page with the others. 

You are at least on the ramparts of Paradise, 
in the Thomas Kirche in Leipsic at the weekly 
Saturday concert of the scholars of the Thomas 
Schule. The worldliness is melted out of you, 
as you sit in the cool, quiet church with the sun- 
light slanting in upon you, and the atmosphere 
alive with sweet sounds. And this is only one 
of hundreds of such experiences all over Ger- 
many. At the Kreuz Kirche in Dresden, at the 
great Dom church in Berlin at Easter time, for 
the asking you may have the oil and wine of 
music's Good Samaritan poured upon the wounds 
of those sore-pressed travellers, your hopes and 
ideals, your dreams and ambitions, that have 
fallen among thieves, on the long, long way from 
Jericho to Jerusalem. 

It is, I must admit, a drab and dreary crowd 
to look at, these Germans at the theatre, at the 
opera, in the concert halls. They do not dress, 
or if they are women undress, for their music as 
do we ; their music dresses for them. They come, 
most of them, in the clothes that they have worn 
all day, each quidlibet induitus. They have 
many of them a meal of meat, bread, and beer 
during the long pause between two of the acts. 



BERLIN 261 

alwaj'S provided for this purpose. Some of them 
bring 111 lie ])jigs wllli llieir own provisions, and 
only buy a glass of beer. Tliey are solemnly at- 
tenlive, an educated and experienced audience 
there for a purpose, and not to be trifled with, 
the most competently critical audience in the 
world. I wonder as I look at them whether the 
fact that they have no backs to their heads, em- 
phasized nowadays by the fact that many men 
wear their hair clipped close to the head, and no 
chins (the lack of chins in Germany is almost a 
national peculiarity) has any physiological or 
psychological relation to their prowess in, and 
love of, and critical appreciation of, the more 
nebulous arts: music, poetry, philosophy, and 
the serious drama. 

They are as adamant in their observance of the 
rides in such matters. More than once I ar- 
rived at the opera a few minutes late, once four 
minutes late, the doors are closed and guarded, 
and I listen to the overture from the outside. 
At a concert led by the famous von Biilow half a 
dozen women come in after the music has begun, 
rustling, sibilant, and excited. The music stoi)s, 
\\\v great conductor turns to glare at lluiii, and, 
i\ ('(M-riiig to the geese wliich arc said lo have 
saved Rome by Uicir hissing, thunders: "Ilier isl 
koin Capitol zii reileii!" 



262 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

There are some forty thousand professional 
musicians in Germany. The town council of 
Berlin is now discussing gravely the sum to be al- 
lotted to the support of the Symphony Orchestra, 
and Charlottenburg is building an opera house 
of its own, and Spandau a theatre; and there has 
just been formed in Berlin a "Society of the 
German Artistes' Theatre," with a capital of 
$200,000, which is a project along the general 
lines of the Comedie Frangaise. The discussions 
and arguments relating to these municipal ex- 
penditures, as I read them in the newspapers, 
are all based upon the assumption that the 
people have a right to good and cheap music, 
just as they have a right to good and cheap beer 
and bread. 

At Dlisseldorf one of the theatres, managed by 
a woman, and supported by the best people in 
the town, is not only a playhouse, but a school 
for actors, and a proving-ground for the drama. 
It is a treat indeed to attend the performances 
there. We have tried similar things in America, 
but with sad results. Fifty millionaires, no one 
of whom had ever read the text of a serious play 
in his life, build a temple for the drama, but 
there are no plays, no actors, no audience, noth- 
ing is accomplished. There is no critical body 
of real lovers of the drama, and there are no 



BERLIN 263 

cheap seats, and there is still that fatuous notion 
that exclusiveness, except in the trifling mat- 
ter of physical propinquity, can be bought with 
dollars. 

The only impenetrably exclusive thing in the 
world is intellect, he is the only aristocrat left 
in these democratic days, and we are not devot- 
ing much attention as yet to his breeding. We 
do not realize that the only valuable democrat 
must be an aristocrat. "Culture seeks to do 
away with classes and sects; to make the best 
that has been thought and known in the world 
current everywhere; to make all men live in an 
atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they 
may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely; 
nourished and not bound by them. This is the 
social idea; and the men of culture are the true 
apostles of equality." 

In Germany there are more men of culture 
per thousand of the population than in any other 
land, but they rule the country not by "sweet- 
ness and light," but by force. This seems at 
first a contradiction. It is not. Religion, life, 
and love are all savage things. Because we have 
known men who preach but do not believe; men 
who breathe and walk who have not lived; men 
who protest but who have not loved, we are 
prone to think of religion, life, and love as soft. 



264 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

We have conquered and chastened so much of 
nature : the air, the water, the bowels of the earth 
that we fool ourselves with thinking that cul- 
ture also is tame, that religion, life, and love are 
tame too. Savage things they are! You may 
know them by that! If you find them nice, 
vivacious, amusing, amenable, be sure that they 
are forgeries. 

This is the profound fallacy underlying the 
present-day economic peace propagandism, 
whose heaviest underwriter, Mr. Carnegie, is, 
by the way, an agnostic. While there is faith 
there will be fighting. Do away with either and 
society would crumble. What the Puritans did 
for us, the Prussians have done for Germany. 
They have fought, are fighting, and will fight for 
their faith. Though they have many unpleas- 
ant characteristics, this is their most admirable 
quality. They believe in an aristocracy of cul- 
ture with a right to rule. Goethe said of Luther 
that he threw back the intellectual progress of 
mankind by centuries, by calling in the passions 
of the multitude to decide on subjects that ought 
to have been left to the learned. This is a good 
example of imitation culture. This is very much 
the view that Mr. Balfour holds in regard to 
Cromwell. But Luther and Bismarck made 
Germany. The one taught Germany to bark. 



BERLIN 205 

the other taught Germany to ]nlc. The great 
dehverers of the world came, not to bring peace, 
but a sword. 

When you leave the dral) crowd in the streets, 
and enter the houses of the real rulers of Ger- 
many, the contrast between the aristocrat and 
the plebeian is nowhere so outstanding. I have 
seen no finer-looking specimens of mankind in 
face and figure and manner than the best of these 
men. If you stroll though the halls of the 
Kricges Academic, where the pick of the young 
ofiicers of the German army, are preparing them- 
selves for the examinations which admit a very 
small proportion of them, to appointments on the 
general staff, you will be delighted with the faces 
and figures, and the air of alertness and intelli- 
gence there. And you will find as fine a type of 
gentlemen, in face, manners, and figure, at their 
head as exists anywhere. 

There are complaints that this Prussian aris- 
tocracy is socially exclusive, is given office both 
in the army and in civil life too readily; but what 
an aristocracy it is! These are the men whose 
families gave, often their all, to make Prussia, 
and then to make Germany. Service of king 
and country is in their blood. They get small 
remuneration for their service. There is no lux- 
ury. They spurn the temptations of money. 



266 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Hundreds and hundreds of them have never been 
inside the house of a rich parvenu, nor have their 
women. They work as no other servants work, 
they Hve on Httle, they and their women and 
children; and you may count yourself happily 
privileged if they permit you the intimacy of 
their home life. 

Officers and gentlemen there are, living on two 
thousand five hundred dollars a year, and most of 
them on much less, and their wives, as well born 
as themselves, darning their socks and count- 
ing the pfennigs with scrupulous care. These 
are the women whose ancestors flung themselves 
against the Roman foe, beside their husbands and 
brothers; these are the women who gave their 
jewels to save Prussia; these are the women, with 
the glint of steel and the light of summer skies 
braided in their eyes, who have taken their 
'hard, self-denying part in making Prussia, and 
the German Empire. No wonder they despise 
the mere money-maker, no wonder they will 
have none of his softness for themselves, and 
hate what Milton calls ''lewdly pampered lux- 
ury," as a danger to their children. They know 
well the moral weapons that won for this 
starved, and tormented, and poverty-stricken 
land its present place in the world as a great 
power. 



BERLIN 207 

"And as the fervent smith of yore 
Beat out the glowing blade, 
Nor wielded in the front of war 

The weapons that he made, 
But in the tower at home still plied 
His ringing trade; 

"So like a sword the son shall roam 
On nobler missions sent; 
And as the smith remained at home 

In peaceful turret pent. 
So sits the while at home the mother 
Well content." 

I, convinced democrat that I am, know very well 
that there are, and always have been, and always 
will be aristocrats, for there is no national salva- 
tion without them an^'^where in the world. The 
aristocrats are the same everywhere, no matter 
what their distinctions of title, or whether they 
have none. They are those who believe that 
they owe their best to God and to men, and they 
serve. Likewise the plebeians are the same all 
over the world; whatever their presumptions or 
denials, they believe that they are here to get 
what they can out of God and men, and they 
take far more than they give. 

Perhaps no feature of German life is so little 
known, so little understood, as this simple-living, 
proud, and exclusive caste, who have made, and 



268 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

still protect and guard, Prussia and Germany. 
They say: "We made Prussia and Germany, and 
we intend to guard them, both from enemies at 
home and from enemies abroad!" My admira- 
tion for these men and women is so unbounded, 
that I would no more carry criticism with me 
into their homes, than I would carry mud into a 
sanctuary. 

They have done much for Germany, but the 
best, perhaps, of all is that they have made 
economy and simple living feasible and even 
fashionable; they have made talent aristocratic; 
they have insisted that social life shall be founded 
on service and breeding and ability. They will 
have no dealings with Herr Miiller, the rich shop- 
keeper, but whatever name the distinguished 
artist, or public servant, or man of science, or 
young giant in any field of intellectual prowess 
may bear, he is welcomed. In general this wel- 
come given by German society to talent holds 
good. There is, however, a society composed 
of the great landed proprietors, who live in the 
country, who come to Berlin rarely, and whose 
horizon is limited severely to their own small 
interests, their restricted circle, and by their pro- 
vincial pride. They recognize nobody but them- 
selves, for the reason that they know nobody and 
nothing else. There is an exclusiveness born of 



BERLIN 200 

stupidity, just as there is an exclusiveness born 
of a sense of duty to one's position and traditions 
in the world. One must recognize that this side 
of social life exists in Germany just as it exists 
in England, and France, and Austria, but it is 
fast losing its importance and its power. 

One hears it lamented that society is changing, 
that the rich Jew and the rich gentile are re- 
ceived where twenty-five years ago the social por- 
tals were shut against them, and that many go to 
their houses who would not have gone not many 
years ago. My experience is too slender to weigh 
these matters in years; my contention is only 
that, from an American or English stand-point, 
their social life is notably simple, and still largely 
founded on merit and service, rather than upon 
the means to provide luxury. 

Though there are thousands of people received 
at court each year, this does not mean that they 
are invited to the more intimate parties of those 
in court control. They are tolerated, not wel- 
comed. Such ])eople are invited to the court 
ball, but never thought of, even, as guests at the 
small supper party of, say, a court official later 
in I lie evening. Prussia and Germany are still 
ruled socially and politically by a small group uf, 
roughly, fifty thousand men, eight thousand of 
them in ilie frock-coat of ihe civilian dfiicial, and 



270 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the rest in military uniforms. Added to this 
must be named a few great financiers, shipping 
and mining and industrial magnates, and great 
land-owners, and less than half a dozen journal- 
ists, and as many professors. 

According to the census there are in all only 
720 persons in Berlin with incomes of more than 
$25,000 a year, and 521 of these have between 
$25,000 and $60,000 a year, leaving a very small 
number, indeed, with incomes adequate, from an 
American point of view, for extravagant social 
expenditure. Of these 200, probably not 50 are 
figures in the social life of the capital. It may 
be seen at once, therefore, that entertaining can- 
not be on a lavish or spectacular scale. 

The minister of foreign affairs and the im- 
perial minister of the interior receive salaries of 
36,000 marks, with 14,000 marks additional for 
expenses. The Prussian ministers have the 
same. Other ministers receive 30,000 marks and 
14,000 additional for expenses. The chancellor 
of the empire receives 36,000 marks and 64,000 
additional for expenses. The highest receivable 
pension is three-fourths of the salary — not count- 
ing the additional sum for expenses, or, as it 
is named, Reprdsentationsaufwand — after forty 
years of service. The foreign ambassadors to 
the more expensive capitals, London, Paris, 



BERLIN 271 

Washington, Saint Petersburg, receive 150,000 
marks a year. Where one has seen something 
of the innumerable demands upon the income 
of a foreign aml^assador, one is the more amazed 
that a great democracy like ours should so re- 
strict the salaries of its representatives abroad 
that only rich men dare undertake the duty. 
What could be more undemocratic! 

Germany is a rich, very rich, country in the 
sense that it has the most intelHgent, hardest- 
working, most fiercely economical, and the most 
rationally and most easily contented population 
of any of the great powers. But Germany is not 
rich in surplus and liquid capital as compared 
with England, France, or America. It is the 
more to her credit that her capital is all hard at 
work. There is just so much less for luxury. 
The people in the streets; the shop-windows; the 
scale of charges at places of public resort and 
amusement; the very small number of well- 
turned-out private vehicles; the comparatively 
few people who live in houses and not in apart- 
ments; the simplicity of the gowns of the women, 
and their inexpensive jewelry and other orna- 
ments; the fewer servants; the salaries and 
wages of all classes, point decisively to plain liv- 
ing on the part of practically everybody. Let 
me say very emphatically, however, that this 



272 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

economy means no lack of generosity. I doubt 
if there are people anywhere so restricted as 
to means, and so delightfully hospitable at the 
same time. Berlin is not as yet under that cloud 
that covers the new, uncultivated, and rich so- 
ciety in America, that tyranny of money which 
makes men and women fearful of being without 
it. Such people shiver at the bare thought of 
losing what money will buy, for the shameful 
reason that then there would be nothing left to 
them; and they are driven, many of them, both 
in London and in New York, to any humilia- 
tion, often to any degradation, to avoid it. 
They grossly overrate the value of money, and 
they exaggerate the terrors of being without it. 
Professor William James, who succeeded in 
analyzing what is at the back of men's brains as 
well as anybody, writes: "We have grown liter- 
ally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who 
elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his 
inner life. We have lost the power of even 
imagining what the ancient idealization of pov- 
erty could have meant: the liberation from mate- 
rial attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier 
indifference, the paying our way by what we are 
or do, and not by what we have, the right to 
fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly 
— the more athletic trim, in short, the moral 



BERLIN 273 

figliting shcapc. . . . It is certain that the prev- 
alent fear of poverty among the e(kicated classes 
is tlie worst moral disease from wliicli our civili- 
zation suffers." They suffer from this malady 
less in Germany than in x\merica or in England. 
I should like to introduce such people into dozens 
of households in Berlin; alas, they could not 
speak or understand the moral or mental lan- 
guage there, where there is everything that 
makes a home's heart beat proudly and peace- 
ably, except money. "La prosperity decouvre 
les vices, et I'adversite les vertus." 

These people need no tribute from me, and 
for their hospitality and friendliness I can make 
no adequate return. I sigh to think that we 
in America know so little of them. Germany 
would not be where she is without them; and I 
offer them as an example to my countrymen, and 
to my countrywomen especially, as showing what 
self-sacrifice and simplicity, and loyal service can 
do for a nation in times of stress; and what high 
ideals and sturdy intlependence and contempt 
for luxury can do in the dangerous days of 
prosperity. Unadvertised, unheralded, keeping 
without murmuring or envy to their own tradi- 
tions, they are here, as everywhere, the saviors 
of the world. 

In this great city of Berlin it may seem that I 



274 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

have over-emphasized their part in the drama of 
the city's hfe. Not so! They are the backbone 
of the municipal as of the national body corpo- 
rate. It is no easy industrial progress, no in- 
creasing wealth and population, no military 
prowess, no isolated great leader that makes a 
nation or a city. It is the men and women giv- 
ing the high and unpurchasable gift of service 
to the state ; giving the fine example of self-sacri- 
ficing and simple living; giving the prowess won 
by years of hard mental and moral training; giv- 
ing the gentle courtesy and kindly welcome of 
the patrician to the stranger, who lift a nation or 
a city to a worthy place in the world. Seek not 
for Germany's strength first in her fleet, her 
army, her hordes of workers, nay, not even in her 
philosophers, teachers, and musicians, though 
they glisten in the eyes of all the world, for you 
will not find it there. It is in these quiet and 
simple homes, that so few Americans and Eng- 
lishmen ever enter, that you will find the sweet- 
ness and the sternness, the indomitable pride of 
service, and the self-sacrificing loyalty that won, 
and that keep for Germany her place in the 
world. 



VI 

"A LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS" 

IT can hardly be doubted that could Lord 
Palmerston have seen what I have seen of 
the changes in Germany, he would at least 
have placed the "damned," in another part of 
his famous sentence. These professors have 
turned their prowess into channels which have 
given Germany, in this scientific industrial age, 
a mighty grip upon something more than theo- 
ries. It may be dull reading to tell the tale of 
damned professordom, but it is to Germany 
that we must all go to school in these matters. 

The American chooses his university or college 
because it is in the neighborhood; because his 
father or other relatives went there; because his 
school friends are going there; on account of the 
prestige of the place; sometimes, too, because 
one is considered more democratic than another; 
sometimes, and perhaps more often than we 
think, on account of the athletics; because it is 
large or small; or on account of the cost. 

The German youth, owing to widely different 
customs and ideals, chooses his univcrsilv for 



276 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

other reasons. If he be of the well-to-do classes, 
and his father before him was a corps student, 
he is likely to go first to the university, where his 
father's corps will receive him and discipline him 
in the ways of a corps student's life, and rigor- 
ous ways they are, as we shall see. Young men 
of small means, and who can afford to waste 
little time in the amusements of university life, 
go at once where the more celebrated professors 
in their particular line of work are lecturing. 

Few students in Germany reside during their 
whole course of study at one university. The 
student year is divided into two so-called sem- 
esters. The student remains, say, in Heidel- 
berg two years or perhaps less, and then moves 
on, let us say, to Berlin, or Gottingen, or Leipsic, 
or Kiel, to hear lectures by other professors, and 
to get and to see something of the best work in 
law, theology, medicine, history, or belles-lettres, 
along the lines of his chosen work. 

One can hardly say too much in praise of this 
system. Many a medical, or law, or theological, 
or philosophical student, or one who is going in 
for a scientific course in engineering or mining, 
would profit enormously could he go from Har- 
vard to Yale, or to Johns Hopkins, or to Prince- 
ton, or to Columbia, and attend the lectures of 
the best ^men at these and other universities. 



LAND OF DAMNED TROFESSORS 277 

Many a man would have gone eagerly to Har- 
vard lo licar James in philosophy, Peiree in 
mathematics, Abbot in exegesis, or to read Greek 
with Palmer; or to Yale to have heard Whitney 
in philology in my day; or now, to name but a 
few, ^'an Dyke at Princeton, Sloane at Colum- 
bia, Wheeler at the University of California, 
Paul Shorey at Chicago, and many others are 
men whom not to know and to hear in one's 
student days is a loss. 

The German student is at a distinct advantage 
in this privilege of hearing the best men at what- 
ever university they may be. The number of 
students, indeed, at particular German universi- 
ties rises and falls in a large measure according to 
the fame and ability of the professors who may 
be lecturing there. One can readily imagine how 
such men as Ilegel, or Ranke, or Mommsen, 
who lectured at Berlin ; or Liebig or Dollinger, at 
Munich; or Ew-ald, at Gottingen; or Sybel, at 
Bonn; or Leibnitz or Schlegel, in their day, or 
Kuno Fischer, in my day, at Heidelberg, must 
have drawn students from all parts of Germany; 
just as do Ilarnack, and Schmidt, and Lam- 
precht, and Adolph Wagner, Schmoller, or 
Gierke, or Schieniann, or Wach, Haeckel, List, 
Deitsch, Ileriui;', or Vcrwonii, in lliese davs. 
Though the German professors are somewhat 



278 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

hampered by the fact that they are servants of 
the state, and their opinions therefore on theo- 
logical, political, and economic matters restricted 
to the state's views, they are free as no other 
teachers in the world to exploit their intellectual 
prowess for the benefit of their purses. Each 
student pays each professor whose lectures he 
attends, and as a result there are certain pro- 
fessors in Germany whose incomes are as high 
as $50,000 a year. 

Even in intellectual matters state control pro- 
duces the inevitable state laziness and indiffer- 
ence. One could tell many a tale of profess- 
ors who arrive late at their lecture-rooms, who 
read slowly, who give just as little matter as 
they can, in order to make their prepared work 
go as far as possible. Some of them, too, read 
the same lectures over and over again, year 
after year, quite content that they have made a 
reputation, gained a fixed tenure of their posi- 
tions, and are sure of a pension. 

There are twenty-one universities in Germany, 
with another already provided for this year in 
Frankfort, and practically the equivalent of a 
university in Hamburg. The total number of 
students is 66,358, an increase since 1895 of 
37,791. Geographically speaking, one has the 
choice between Kiel, Konigsberg, and Berlin in 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 279 

the north, Munich in Lhc souLh, SLrassljurg on 
the boundaries of France, or BresLau in Silesia. 
At the present writing Bcrhn has 9,G86 students, 
and some 5,000 more authorized to attend 
lectures, over half of them grouped under the 
general heading ''Philosophy"; next comes Mu- 
nich with 7,000, nearl}^ 5,000 of them grouped 
under the headings "Jurisprudence" and "Phi- 
losophy"; then Leipsic with 5,000; then Bonn 
with 4,000; and last in point of numbers Rostock 
with 800 students. There are now some 1,500 
women students at the German universities, but 
a total of 4,500 who attend lectures, and Doctor 
Marie Linden at the beginning of 1911 was ap- 
pointed one of the professors of the medical fac- 
ulty at Bonn, but the appointment was vetoed 
by the Prussian ministry. 

In addition to the universities is the modern 
development of the technical high-schools, of 
which there are now eleven, one each in Berlin, 
Dresden, Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Hanover, 
Karlsruhe, Munich, Stuttgart, Danzig, Aix, and 
Breslau. These schools have faculties of archi- 
tecture, building construction, mechanical en- 
gineering, chemistry, and general science, includ- 
ing mathematics and natural science. They 
confer the degree of Doctor of Engineering, and 
admit those students holding the certificate of 



280 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the Gymnasium, Realgymnasium, and Oberreal- 
schule. They rank now with the universities, 
and their 17,000 students may fairly be added to 
the grand total number of German students, 
making 83,000 in all, and if to this be added the 
4,000 unmatriculated students, we have 87,000. 
While the population of Germany has in- 
creased 1.4 per cent, in the last year, the num- 
ber of students has increased 4.6 per cent, and of 
the total number 4.4 per cent, are women. Since 
the founding of the empire the population has 
increased from 40,000,000 to 65,000,000, but the 
number of students has increased from 18,000 to 
60,000. The teaching staffs in the universities 
number 3,400, and in the technical high-schools 
753, or, roughly, there are, in the higher-educa- 
tion department of Germany, nearly 90,000 per- 
sons engaged; as these figures do not include 
officials and many unattached teachers and 
students indirectly connected with the univer- 
sities. There are in addition agricultural high- 
schools, agricultural institutes, and technical 
schools such as veterinary high-schools, schools 
of mining, forestry, architecture and building, 
commercial schools, schools of art and industry; 
a naval school at Kiel; a colonial institute at 
Hamburg, with sixty professors and tutors, 
where men are trained for colonial careers, and 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 281 

wliic-li serves also llie purpose of distribulirig 
information of all kinds regarding the colonies; 
there are 400 schools which prepare for a busi- 
ness career, with 50,000 pupils, and the Social- 
ists in Berlin nuiinlain an academy for the in- 
struction of their paid secretaries and organizers 
in the rudiments and controversial points of 
socialism, military academies at Berlin and 
Munich, besides some 50 schools of navigation, 
and 20 military and cadet institutions. There 
are also courses of lectures, given under the 
auspices of the German foreign office, to in- 
struct candidates for the consular service in the 
commercial and industrial affairs of Germany. 

At several of the universities evening exten- 
sion lectures are given, an innovation first tried 
at Leipsic, where more than seven thousand 
persons paid small fees to attend the lectures 
in a recent year. 

If one considers the range of instruction from 
the Volkschulcn and Forthildungsschiilcii up 
through the skeleton list I have mentioned to the 
universities, and then on beyond that to the 
thousands still engaged as students in the com- 
merce and industry of Germany, as, for example, 
the Icclmically employed men in I he Krupp 
Works ;il Essen, or \\\c Color Works al Elber- 
f(>l(l, to ineuliou two of hundreds, it is seen that 



282 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Germany is gone over with a veritable fine-tooth 
comb of education. There is not only nothing 
like it, there is nothing comparable to it in the 
world. If training the minds of a population 
were the solution of the problems of civilization, 
they are on the way to such solution in Germany. 
Unfortunately there is no such easy way out of 
our troubles for Germany or for any other na- 
tion. Some of us will live to see this fetich of 
regimental instruction of everybody disappear 
as astrology has disappeared. There is a Jap- 
anese proverb which runs, "The bottom of light- 
houses is very dark." 

As early as 1717 Frederick William I in an 
edict commanded parents to send their children 
to school, daily in summer, twice a week in win- 
ter. Frederick the Great at the close of the 
Seven Years' War, 1764, insisted again upon 
compulsory school attendance, and prescribed 
books, studies, and discipline. At the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century began a great 
change in the primary schools due to the influ- 
ence of Pestalozzi, and in the secondary schools 
owing to the efforts of Herder, Frederic August 
Wolf, William Humboldt, and Sunern. Hum- 
boldt was the Prussian minister of education for 
sixteen months. In 1809 he sent a memorial to 
the Xing, urging the establishment and endow- 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 283 

ment of a university in Berlin. He used liis 
authority and his great influence to further 
higher and secondary education, and fixed the 
main lines of action which were followed for a 
century. lie hoped that a liberal education 
of his countrymen would make for both an in- 
tellectual and moral regeneration, and emanci- 
pate the people from their sluggish obedience 
to conventionality. The schools then were part 
of the ecclesiastical organization and have never 
ceased to be so wholly, and until recently the 
title of the Prussian minister has been: "Min- 
ister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Instruction, and 
Medical Affairs." That part of the minister's 
title, "Medical Affairs," has within the last few 
months been eliminated. 

The French Revolution, and the dismember- 
ment of Prussia at Tilsit, put a stop to orderly 
progress. Stein and his colleagues, however, 
started anew; students were sent to Switzerland 
to study pedagogical methods; provincial school- 
boards were established, and about 1850 all pub- 
lic-school teachers were declared to be civil ser- 
vants; and later, in 1872, during Bismarck's 
campaign against the Jesuits, all private schools 
were made subject to state inspection. In 
Prussia to-day no iiinii or woman may give in- 
struction even as a governess or {)ri\'ate tutor, 
without the ccrtififat(" of the state. 



284 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

This control of education and teaching by a 
central authority is an unmixed blessing. In 
Prussia, at any rate, the officials are hard-work- 
ing, conscientious, and enthusiastic, and the 
system, whether one gives one's full allegiance 
to it or not, is admirably worked out. Above 
all, it completely does away with sham physi- 
cians, sham doctors of divinity, sham engineers, 
and mining and chemical experts, sham dentists 
and veterinary surgeons, who abound in our 
country, where shoddy schools do a business of 
selling degrees and certificates of proficiency in 
everything from exegesis to obstetrics. These 
fakir academies are not only a disgrace but a 
danger in x\merica, and here, as in other matters, 
Germany has a right to smile grimly at certain 
of our hobbledehoy methods of government. 

The elementary schools, or V olkschiden, are 
free, and attendance is compulsory from six to 
fourteen; in addition, the Fortbildungsscliuleji, or 
continuation schools, can also be made compul- 
sory up to eighteen years of age. There are 
some 61,000 free public elementary schools with 
over 10,000,000 pupils, and over 600 private ele- 
mentary schools with 42,000 pupils who pay fees. 

Under a regulation of the Department of 
Trade and Industry, towns with more than 
twenty thousand inhabitants are empowered to 
make their own rules compelling commercial 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 285 

employees under eighteen to attend the contin- 
uation schools a certain nunilxM* of hours 
monthly, and fining employers who interfere with 
such attendance. It has even been suggested 
that this law be extended to include girls. 

In Berlin this has already been put into opera- 
tion, and this year some 30,000 girls will be com- 
pelled to attend continuation schools, where they 
will be taught cooking, dress-making, laundry 
work, house-keeping economy, and for those who 
wish it, office work. It will require some train- 
ing even to pronounce the name of this new in- 
stitution, which requires something more than 
the number of letters in the alphabet to spell 
it, for it has this terrifying title: Mddchenjpflicht- 
forthUdungsscliulc. 

The work in these PjiichtJorihUdungf^scludcn, 
or compulsor}" continuation schools, is practical 
and thorough. The boys are from fourteen to 
eighteen years of age, and are obliged to attend 
three hours twice a week. Shopkeepers and 
others, employing lads coming under the pro- 
visions of the law, are obliged by threat of hea\y 
fines to send them. The boys pay nothing. 
There are some 34,000 of such pupils under one 
jurisdiction in Berlin, and tlio cost to the city 
is $300,000 annually. The curricuhnn includes 
lotler-wriling, book-keeping, exchange, bank- 



286 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

credits, checks and bills, the duty of the busi- 
ness man to his home, to the city, and to his 
fellow business men, his legal rights and duties, 
and, in great detail, all questions of citizenship. 
Methods of the banks, stock exchange, and in- 
surance companies are explained. The business 
man's relations in detail to the post-office, the 
railways, the customs, canals, shipping agencies 
are dealt with. The investigation of credits and 
the general management from cellar to attic of 
what we call a "store" are taught, and lectures 
are given upon business ethics and family rela- 
tions and morals. 

In towns where factories are more common 
than shops there are schools similar in kind, as 
at Dortmund, for example, where you may begin 
with horse-shoeing in the cellar, and go up 
through the work of carpenter, mason, plumber, 
sign-painter, poster-designer, to the designing of 
stained-glass windows and the modelling of ani- 
mals and men. 

In the strictly agricultural districts of Prussia 
the number of courses open to those who work 
upon the land has steadily increased. In 1882 
there were 559 courses of instruction and 9,228 
pupils; in 1902, 1,421 such courses and 20,666 
pupils; and in 1908, 3,781 courses and 55,889 
pupils. About five per cent, of the cost of such 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 287 

instruction, which cost the state 5GG,599 marks 
in 1908, is paid by the fees of the pupils them- 
selves. 

To those interested in ways and means It may 
serve a purpose to say that the total cost of 
these elementary schools amounts to $130,715,- 
250 a year, of which the various state govern- 
ments pay $37,500,000 and local authorities 
the rest. In 1910 the city of Berhn spent 
$9,881,987 on its schools. The average cost per 
pupil is $13.50. In some of the tow^ns of differ- 
ent classes of population that I have visited the 
number of pupils per 100 inhabitants stands as 
follows: Berlin, 11.1; Essen, 16.5; Dortmund, 10; 
DUsseldorf, 13.2; Charlottenburg, 9; Duisburg, 
1G.7; Oberhausen, 17.7; Bielefeld, 14.7; Bonn, 
11.1; Cologne, 13.1. 

There are 170,000 teachers in these elementary 
schools, of whom 30,000 are women. They be- 
gin with $250 a year, which is raised to $300 
when they are given a fixed position. By a 
graduated scale of increase a teacher at the age 
of forty-eight (when he may retire) may receive 
a maximum of $725. A woman teacher's salary 
would varj' from $300 to $G00 as the maximum. 
These figures are for Prussia. In other states 
of tlie empire, in Bavaria and Saxony, for ex- 
ample, the scale of salaries is somewhat higher. 



288 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The secondary schools are the well-known 
Gymnasien and Progymnasien, the Realgymna- 
sien, and the Realschulen. Roughly the Gym- 
nasien prepare for the universities, and the Real- 
schulen for the technical schools. Admission to 
the universities and to any form of employment 
under the civil service demands a certificate 
from one or another of these secondary schools. 

In 1890, two years after the present Emperor 
came to the throne, he called together a confer- 
ence of teachers and in an able speech suggested 
that these secondary schools devote more time 
and attention to technical training. As a result 
of this, the certificates of the Realgymnasien and 
Realschulen are now received as equivalent to 
those conferred by the Gymnasien, where Latin 
and Greek are, as they were then, still para- 
mount. 

Of these secondary schools some are state 
schools; others are municipal or trade-supported 
schools; some are private institutions; but all 
are amenable to the rules, organization, and 
curricula approved by the state. All secondary 
and elementary teachers must meet the exam- 
inational requirements of the state, which fixes 
a minimum salary and contributes thereto. In 
the universities and technical high-schools all 
professors are appointed by the state, and largely 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 280 

paid by the state as well. '' In the year 1910 the 
German Empire expended under the general 
heading of elementary instruction $130,715,2.50. 
Prussia alone spent $00,424,325; Bavaria, $8,- 
955,825 (though nearly $750,000 of this total 
went for building and repairs for both churches 
and schools); Baden, $4,176,075; Saxony, $4,- 
573,250; the free city of Hamburg, $5,501,900. 
The total expenditures of the empire and of the 
states of the empire combined in 1910 amounted 
to $2,225,225,000; of this, as we have seen, 
more than $130,000,000 went for instruction and 
allied uses; $198,748,775 was the cost of the 
army; and $82,302,650 the cost of the navy, 
not counting the extraordinary expenditures for 
these two arms of the service, which amounted 
to $5,624,775 for the army, and $28,183,125 for 
the navy^ The total expenditure of the Father- 
land for schools, army, and navy amounted, 
therefore, to one-fifth of the total, or $416,- 
108,225. 

I have grouped these expenditures together 
for the reason, that I am still one of those who 
remain distrustful and disdainful of the Carnegie 
holy water, and a firm believer that the two best 
schools in Germany, or anywhere else where they 
are as well conducted as there, are the army and 
the na\y. Even if they were not schools of war. 



290 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

they would be an inestimable loss to the coun- 
try were they no longer in existence as manhood- 
training schools. This is the more clear when it 
is remembered that, according to the army stand- 
ard, both the German peasant and the urban 
dweller are steadily deteriorating. In ten years 
the percentage of phj^sically efficient men in the 
rural districts decreased from 60.5 to 58.2 per 
cent., and this decrease is even more marked in 
particular provinces. Infant mortality, despite 
better hygienic conditions and more education, 
has not decreased, and in some districts has in- 
creased; while the birth-rate, especially in Prus- 
sia and Thuringia, has fallen off as well. For the 
whole of Germany, the births to every thousand 
of the inhabitants were, in 1876, 42.63; in 1891, 
38.25; in 1905, 34; and in 1909, 31.91. In Ber- 
lin the births per thousand in 1907 were 24.63 
and in 1911 only 20.84. 

The observer who cares nothing for statis- 
tics, who rambles about in the district of Leip- 
sic, Chemnitz, Riesa, Oschatz, and in the moun- 
tainous district of southeast Saxony, may see 
for himself a population lacking in size, vigor, 
and health, noticeably so indeed. Education at 
one end turning out an unwholesome, "white- 
collared, black-coated proletariat," as the So- 
cialists call them; and industry and commerce. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 201 

which even tempt the farmer to sell what he 
should keep to eat, at the other, are making 
serious inroads upon the health and well-being 
of the population. 

The Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, 
speaking in the Reichstag February 11, 1011, 
said: "The fear that we may not be working 
along the right lines in the education of our 
youth is a cause of great anxiety to many people 
in Germany. We shall not solve this problem 
by shunning it!" 

Many social economists hold that higher edu- 
cation is unfitting numbers of young men from 
following the humbler pursuits, while at the same 
time it is not making them as efficient as are 
their ambitions; and such men are recognized as 
the most potent chemical in making the milk of 
human kindness to turn sour. At a meeting of 
the Goethebund this year, advocating school re- 
form, it was evident that many intelligent men 
in Germany were not satisfied with present 
methods of education, which were characterized 
as wasting energy in mechanical methods of 
teaching, and so robbing youth of its youth. It 
is beginning to be understood in Germany, as it 
Las been understood by wise men in all ages, 
that "to spend too much time in studies is sloth; 
to use them too much for ornament is affecta- 



292 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

tion; to make judgment wholly by their rules is 
the humour of the scholar." This commen- 
tary of Bacon should be on the walls of every 
school and university in Germany. An ed- 
ucation can do nothing more for a man than 
to make him less fearful of what he does not 
know, and to save him from the vulgarity of be- 
ing pre-empted wholly by the present, because 
he knows something of the past. You cannot 
educate a man to be a poet or a preacher or a 
pianist; that we know. We are only just dis- 
covering that the much-lauded technical edu- 
cation will not make him an engineer or a ship- 
builder or an architect. You may give him the 
tools and the elementary rules, but the rest he 
must do himself. Nine-tenths of the techni- 
cally educated men to-day are working for men 
who were liberally educated, or who educated 
themselves. Germany is producing a race of 
first-rate clerks and skilled mechanics, who are 
working hard to enrich the Jews. 

In America, it is true, we have gone ahead 
along educational lines. In 1800, it is said, the 
average adult American had 82 days of school 
attendance; in 1900, 146 days. In the last 
quarter of a century our secondary schools have 
increased in number from 1,400 to 12,000; and 
during the last eighteen years the proportion of 



LAND OF DAMNED PllOFESSORS 21):3 

our youth receiving liigii-scliool insLruclion iias 
doubled, and attendance at American colleges 
has increased 400 per cent, while the population 
increased by 100 per cent. But education is by 
no means so strenuous as in Germany. The 
hours are shorter, holidays longer, standards 
lower, and the emphasis far less insistent. A 
boy who has not the mental energy to pass the 
entrance examinations at Harvard, for instance, 
and proceed to a degree there, ought to be 
drowned, or to drown himself. I would not say 
as much of the requirements in Germany, for 
they are far more severe. Prince von Hohenlohe 
in his memoirs gives an account of a conversa- 
tion between the Emperor, the Emperor's tutor, 
and himself. The Emperor was regretting the 
severity of the examinations in the secondary 
schools, and it was replied to him that this was 
the only way to prevent a flood of candidates for 
the civil service! 

There is another all-important factor in Ger- 
many bearing upon this point. A boy must have 
passed into the upper section of the class before 
the last, " Sccunda,''' as it is called, or have 
passed an equivalent examination, in order to 
serve one year instead of three in the army. To 
bean Einjdhrigcr is. lluM-cforo, in a way llu> mark 
of an educated gentleman. The tales of suicide 



294 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and despair of school-boys in Germany are, alas, 
too many of them true; and it is to be remem- 
bered that not to reach a certain standard here 
means that a man's way is barred from the army 
and navy, civil service, diplomatic or consular 
service, from social life, in short. The unedu- 
cated man of position in Germany does not exist, 
cannot exist. This is, therefore, no phantom, 
but a real terror. The man of twenty-five who 
has not won an education and a degree faces a 
blank wall barring his entrance anywhere; and 
even when, weaponed with the necessary aca- 
demic passport, he is permitted to enter, he 
meets with an appalling competition, which has 
peopled Germany with educated inefficients who 
must work for next to nothing, and who keep 
down the level of the earnings of the rest because 
there is an army of candidates for every vacant 
position. On the other hand, the industries of 
Germany have bounded ahead, because the 
army of chemists and physicists of patience, 
training, and ability, who work for small salaries 
provide them with new and better weapons than 
their rivals. 

There are two sides to this question of fine- 
tooth-comb education. Its advantages both 
America and England are seeing every day in 
these stout rivals of ours; but its disadvantages 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 295 

are not to be concealed, and are perhaps doing 
an undermining work that will be more apparent 
in the future than now it is. The very fact that 
an alien, an oriental race, the Jews, have taken 
so disproportionate a share of the cream of Ger- 
man prosperity, and have turned this technical 
prowess to purposes of their own, is, in and of 
itself, a sure sign that there may be an educated 
proletariat working slavishly for masters whom, 
with all their learning and all their mental dis- 
cipline, they cannot force to abdicate. 

Strange to say, the federal constitution of 
1871, which gave Germany its emperor, did not 
include the schools, and each state has its own 
school system, but in 1875 an imperial school 
commission was formed which has done much to 
make the system of all the states uniform. 

The three classes of schools recognized as lead- 
ing later to a university career are the Gymna- 
sium, in which Latin and Greek are still the fun- 
damental requirements; the Realgymnasium, in 
which Latin but no Greek is required; the Ober- 
realschule, in which the classics are not taught 
at all, but emphasis is laid upon modern lan- 
guages and natural science. In addition to these 
there are the so-called Reformschulen, of very 
recent growth, which are an attempt to put less 
emphasis upon the classics, but without exclud- 



296 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing them entirely from the course, and to pay 
more attention proportionately to modern lan- 
guages, French in particular. There are in addi- 
tion some four hundred public and one thousand 
or more private higher girls' schools, with an at- 
tendance of a quarter of a million, all subject to 
state supervision. 

If one were to make a genealogical tree of 
the German schools which educate the children 
from the age of six up to the age of entrance to 
the university, it might be described as follows: 
First are the Volkschulen, which every child 
must attend from six to fourteen. In the 
smaller country schools the children of all ages 
may be in one school-room and under one 
teacher; in another, divided into two classes; in 
another, into three or four classes; up to the 
large city schools, in which they are divided on 
account of their number into as many as eight 
classes. Next would come the Mittelschulen, 
where the pupils are carried on a year farther, 
and where the last year corresponds to the first 
year of the so-called Lehrerbildungsanstalten, or 
training schools for teachers. These again are 
divided into two, one called Prceparanda, the 
other Seminar^ the former carrying the pupil on 
to his sixteenth year, the latter to the nineteenth 
year and turning him out a full-fledged Volk- 



LAND OF DAIVINED PROFESSORS 207 

schule teacher, and giving him the right to serve 
only one year in the army. 

If boy or girl goes on from the fourteenth 
year, the hohcre Knabcnscliulen and the hoh&re 
Mddchensckulcn take them on to the eighteenth 
or nineteenth year. Many boys go on till they 
have passed from the lower Secunda, next to the 
last class, which is divided into upper and lower 
Sccunda, into the upper Secunda, when their cer- 
tificate entitles them to serve one year only in 
the army, when they quit school. Many boys, 
too, intending to become officers, leave school at 
sixteen or seventeen and go to regular cramming 
institutions, where they do their work more 
quickly and devote themselves to the special 
subjects required. For boys intending to go on 
through the higher schools, there are schools 
taking them on from the age of nine, with a cur- 
riculum better adapted than that of the Volk- 
schuleii to that end. 

In all these higher schools there is less atten- 
tion paid to mere examinations, and more atten- 
tion paid to the general grip tlic pupils have on 
the work in hand; and of the teaching, as men- 
tioned elsewhere, too much cannot be said in its 
praise. 

For those boys who finish their public school- 
ing at the age of fourteen and then turn to earn- 



298 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing their living, there are the continuation 
schools, which are in many parts of the country 
compulsory, and which are nicely adapted, ac- 
cording to their situation in shopkeeping cit- 
ies, in factory towns, or in the country, to give 
the pupils the drilHng and instruction necessary 
for their particular employment. The average 
amount of expenditure for these continuation 
schools is $6,250,000. In Prussia there are some 
1,500 of these schools, with an average attend- 
ance of 300,000 pupils. 

According to the last census the proportion of 
illiterates among the recruits for the army was 
0.02 per cent. The number of those who could 
neither read nor write in Germany was, in 1836, 
41.44 per cent.; in 1909, 0.01 per cent. If one 
were to name all the agricultural schools; tech- 
nical schools; schools of architecture and build- 
ing; commercial schools, for textile, wood, 
metal, and ceramic industries; art schools; 
schools for naval architecture and engineering 
and navigation; and the public music schools, it 
would be seen that it is no exaggeration to speak 
of fine-tooth-comb education. 

I have visited scores of all sorts of schools all 
over Germany, from a peasant common school in 
Posen up to that last touch in education, the 
schools in Charlottenburg, the Schulpforta Acad- 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 200 

emy, and such a private boys' school as Die 
Schiilcrheim-Kolonic des Arndt-Gymnasiums in 
the Grlinewald near Berhn, and the training 
schools for the military cadets. Through the 
courtesy of the authorities I was permitted, when 
I wished it, to sit in the class-rooms, and even to 
put questions to the boys and girls in the classes. 
From the small boys and girls making their first 
efforts at spelling to the young woman of seven- 
teen who translated a paragraph of the "Ger- 
mania" of Tacitus, not into German but into 
French, for me (a problem I offered as a good test 
of whether I was merely assisting at a prepared 
exhibition of the prowess of the class or whether 
the minds had been trained to independence), 
I have looked over a wide field of teaching and 
learning in Germany, If that young person was 
typical of the pupils of this upper girls' school, 
there is no doubt of their ability to meet an in- 
tellectual emergency of that kind. 

Of one feature of German education one can 
write without reservation, and that is the teach- 
ing. Everywhere it is good, often superlatively 
good, and half a dozen times I have listened to 
the teaching of a chiss in history, in Latin, in 
German literature, in French literature, where it 
was a treat to be a listener. I remember in 
particular a class in pliysical geography, another 



300 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

reading Ovid, another reading Shakespeare, and 
another reading Goethe's "Hermann and Doro- 
thea," where I enjoyed my hah-hour, as though 
I had been hstening to a distinguished lecturer 
on his darhng subject. 

We know how httle these men and women 
teachers are paid, but there is such a flood of in- 
tellectual output in Germany that the competi- 
tion is ferocious in these callings, and the schools 
can pick and choose only from those who have 
borne the severest tests with the greatest suc- 
cess. The teaching is so good that it explains 
in part the amount of work these poor children 
are enabled to get through. School begins at 
seven in summer, at eight in winter. The 
course for those intending to go to the univer- 
sity is nine years; the recitation hours alone 
range from twenty-five to thirty-two hours a 
week; to which must be added two hours a week 
of singing and three hours a week of gymnastics, 
and this for forty -two weeks in the year. The 
preparation for class-work requires from two 
and a half to four hours more. It foots up to 
something like fifty hours a week! 

At Eton, in England, the boys grumble be- 
cause they only have a half-holiday every other 
day, and four months of the year vacation. It 
will be interesting to see which educational 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 801 

method is to produce the men who are to win the 
next Waterloo. No wonder that nearly seventy 
per cent, of those who reach the standard re- 
quired of those who need serve only one year 
instead of three in the army are near-sighted, 
and that more than forty-five per cent, are put 
on one side as physically unfit. The increase in 
population in Germany is so great, however, and 
the candidates for the army so numerous, that 
the authorities are far more strict in those they 
accept than in France, for example. There is 
more manhood material for the German army 
and navy every year than is needed. 

In the first year of the nine-years' course in a 
Gymnasiuvi the 25 hours a week are divided: 
religion, 3 hours; German, 4 hours; Latin, 8 
hours; geography, 2 hours; mathematics, 4 
hours; natural science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours. 
In the last year: religion, 2 hours; German, 3 
hours; Latin, 7 hours; Greek, 6 hours — Greek is 
begun in the fourth year; French, 3 hours — 
French is begun in the third year; history, 3 
hours; mathematics, 4 hours; natural science, 2 
hours. 

In the first year in a Rcalgymnasunn: religion, 
3 hours; German, 4 hours; Latin, 8 hours; 
geograj)liy, 2 hours; mathematics, 4 hours; nat- 
ural science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours. In the 



302 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

last year of the course : religion, 2 hours ; German, 
3 hours ; Latin, 4 hours ; French — begun in 
third year — 4 hours; English — begun in fourth 
year — 3 hours; mathematics, 5 hours; natural 
science, 5 hours; drawing, 2 hours. 

In the first year in an Oberrealschule: religion, 
3 hours; German, 5 hours; French, 6 hours; 
geography, 2 hours; mathematics, 5 hours; nat- 
ural science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours. In the 
last year: religion, 2 hours; German, 4 hours; 
French, 4 hours ; English — begun in the fourth 
year — 4 hours; history, 3 hours; geography, 1 
hour; mathematics, 5 hours; natural science, 6 
hours; free-hand drawing — begun in the second 
year — 2 hours. 

It may be seen from these schedules where the 
emphasis is laid in each of these schools. So far 
as results are concerned, the pupils about to leave 
for the universities seemed to me to know their 
Latin, Greek, French, German, and English, and 
their local and European history well. Their 
knowledge of Latin and of either French or Eng- 
lish, sometimes of both, is far superior to any- 
thing required of a student entering any college 
or university in America. I have asked many 
pupils to read passages at sight in Latin, French 
and English in schools in various parts of Ger- 
many and there is no question of the grip they 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 303 

have upon what they have been taught. I am, 
alas, not a scliolar, and can only judge of the re- 
quirements and of the training and its results 
in subjects where I am at home; and I must take 
it for granted that these boys and girls are as 
well trained in other subjects where I am in- 
capable of passing judgment. It is improbable, 
however, that the same thoroughness does not 
characterize their work throughout the whole 
curriculum. The examination at the end of the 
secondary-school period, called Ahituricntcn- 
cxamcn, is more thorough and covers a wider 
range than any similar examination in America. 
It is a test of intellectual maturity. It permits 
no gaps, covers a wide ground, leaves no subject 
dropped on the way, and sends a man or woman 
to the university, with an equipment entirely 
a.dequate for such special work as the individual 
proposes to undertake. 

It seemed to me that in many class-rooms the 
ventilation was distinctly bad, but here too I 
must admit an exaggerated love for fresh air, 
born of my own love of out-door exercise. 

There are practically no schools in Germany 
like the public schools for boys in England, and 
our own private schools for boys, like Saint 
Paul's, Groton, Saint Clark's, and others, where 
tlie training of character and physique are vu\- 



304 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

phasized. Here again I admit my prejudice in 
favor of such education. I should be made 
pulp, indeed, did I try to run through the boys 
of a fifth or sixth form at home, but, from the 
look of them, I would have undertaken it for a 
wager in Germany. 

It is not their fault, poor boys. Practically 
the whole emphasis is laid upon drilling the mind. 
Moral and physical matters are left to the home, 
and in the home there are no fathers and brothers 
interested in games or sport, and in this busy, 
competitive strife, and with the small means at 
the disposal of the majority, there is no time and 
no opportunity. Boys and girls seldom leave 
home for distant boarding-schools. They go from 
home to school and from school home every day, 
and have none of the advantages to be gained 
from intercourse with men outside their own 
circles. It shows itself in a deplorable lack of 
orientation as compared with our lads of the 
same relative standing. In dress and bearing, in 
at-homeness in the world, in ability to take care 
of themselves under strange conditions or in an 
emergency, and in domestic hygiene they are in- 
ferior, and yet they are so competent to push the 
national military, industrial, and commercial ball 
along as men, that one wonders whether Bage- 
hot's gibe at certain well-to-do classes of the 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 305 

Scaxons, that "they spend half their time washing 
their whole persons," may not have a grain of 
truth in it. 

Another feature of the school life which is 
prominent, especially in Prussia, is the incessant 
and insistent emphasis laid upon patriotism. 
In every school, almost in every class-room, is a 
picture of the Emperor; in many, pictures also of 
his father and grandfather. Even in a municipal 
lodging-house, where I found some tiny waifs 
and strays being taught, there were pictures of 
the sovereign, and brightly colored pictures of 
the war of 1870-71, generally with German per- 
sonalities on horseback, and the French as pris- 
oners with bandages and dishevelled clothing. 
This war, which began with the first movement 
of the German army on August 4, and on the 2d 
of September next Napoleon was a prisoner; this 
war, in which the German army at the beginning 
of operations consisted of 384,000 officers and 
men and which had grown during the truce to 
030,000 on March 1 ; lost in killed and those who 
died from wounds '■28,'-278, of whom 1,871 were 
officers; this war is flaunted at the population of 
Germany continually, and from every possible 
angle. We hear very little of our war of 18G1- 
1865, that cost us }i^8,000,000,000 with killed and 
wounded numbering some 700,000. We do not 



306 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

find it necessary to feed our patriotism with a 
nursing-bottle. 

At a kindergarten two tots, a boy and a girl, 
stood at the top of some steps while the rest 
marched by and saluted; they later descended 
and went through the motions of reviewing the 
others. They were playing they were Kaiser 
and Kaiserin! 

Two small boys in a school-yard discussing 
their relative prowess as jumpers end the dis- 
cussion when one says as a final word: "Oh, I 
can jump as high as the Kaiser!" 

We have noted in another article how even 
police sergeants must be familiar with the history 
of the House of Hohenzollern. 

I am an admirer of Germany and her Emperor, 
with a distinct love of discipline and a bias in 
favor of military training, and with an experi- 
ence of actual warfare such as only a score or 
so of German officers of my generation have 
had; but I am bound to say I found this pound- 
ing in of patriotism on every side distinctly nau- 
seating. Boys and girls, and men and women, 
ought not to need to be pestered with patriotism. 
We had a controversy in America some ten years 
before the Franco-German War, where in one 
battle more men were killed and wounded than 
in all the battles Prussia, and later Germany, 
has fought since 1860. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 307 

In the South, at any rate, we bear the scars 
and the mourning of those days still, but nobody 
would be thanked for pummelling us with patri- 
otism. In the skirmish with Spain our military 
authorities were pestered with candidates for the 
front. Germany itself is not more a nation in 
arms than America would be at the smallest 
threat of insult or aggression. But we take those 
things for granted. If we have the honor to 
possess a medal or a decoration, the gentlemen 
among us wear it only when asked to do so, or 
perhaps on the Fourth of July. 

Germany is even now somewhat loosely ce- 
mented together. Their leaders may feel that it 
is necessary to keep ever in the minds even of 
the children, that Germany is a nation with an 
Emperor and a victory over France, France in po- 
litical rags and patches at the time, behind them. 

They even carry this teaching of patriotism 
beyond the boundaries of Germany. The All- 
gemeincr Deutscher Schulverein zur ErhaJtung des 
Dcuischtums im Auslamlc, is a society with head- 
c^uarters in Berlin devoting itself to the advance- 
ment of German education all over the world. 
The society was started privately in 1886, and 
is now partly supported by the state. It con- 
trols some sixteen hundred centres for the teach- 
ing of German and German patriotism, and Ger- 
man learning. There are such centres in China, 



308 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

South America, the United States, Spain, and 
elsewhere. They number 90 in Europe, 25 in 
Asia, 20 in Africa, 70 in Brazil, 40 in Argentina, 
and 100 in Australia and Canada. The society 
is instrumental in having German taught in 
5,000 schools and academies in the United States 
to 600,000 pupils. The work is not advertised, 
rather it is concealed so far as possible, but it is 
looked upon as a valuable force for the advance- 
ment of German interests throughout the world. 
In the schools, too, there is an enemy of which 
we know nothing, and that is the active propa- 
gandism of socialism, which is anti-military, anti- 
monarchical, and anti-status quo. Leaflets and 
books and pamphlets are widely distributed 
among the school children; many of the teachers 
are in sympathy with these obstructionist meth- 
ods ; and the authorities may feel that they must 
do what they can to combat this teaching. In 
Prussia, on every side, and in the industrial 
towns of Saxony, one sees the evidence of this im- 
potent discontent expressing itself either openly 
or in surly malice of speech and manner. The 
streets of Berlin, and of the industrial towns, 
show this condition at every turn, and when the 
Reichstag closes with cheers for the Emperor, 
the Socialist members leave in a body before that 
loyal ceremony takes place. 






~;;:^. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS m) 

We in AnuM'ica arc hrouglil up Lo believe lliat 
the best cure for such nialacHes is to open the 
wound, to give freedom of speech, to let every 
boy and girl and man and woman find oul for 
himself his citizen's path to walk in. We have 
no policemen on our public platforms, no gags in 
the mouths of our professors or preachers, no 
lurid pictures of battles, no plastering of the 
walls of our schools and seminaries with pictures 
of our rulers, and withal our German immigrants 
are perhaps our best and most patriotic citizens. 
In America they think less and do more, and 
for most men this is the better way. It makes 
life very complicated to think too much about it. 

Self-consciousness is the prince of mental and 
social diseases, as vanity is the princess, and 
even self-conscious patriotism seems a little un- 
wholesome, not quite manly, and often even 
grotcsciue. It is easy to say: *'Dic mihi si fueris 
tu leo, qualis eris.^" and if one is a person of no 
great importance, it is an embarrassing question 
to answer. In this connection I can only say 
that I should assume that my lionhood was 
taken for grantcnl without so much roaring, 
bristHng of the mane, and switching of the tail. 
It irritates those who are discontented, it posi- 
li\'('ly iiifui-ialcs (he redder democrats, and it 
bores the chihh-en, and, worst of all. jx-oelaiins to 



310 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

everybody that the Hon is not quite comfortable 
and at his ease. The German Hon is a fine, big 
feUow now, with fangs, and teeth, and claws as 
serviceable as need be, and it only makes him 
appear undignified to be forever looking at him- 
self in the looking-glass. 

Whatever may be the right or wrong of 
these comparative methods of training, Germans 
trained in the investigation of such matters agree 
in telling me that the boys who come up to the 
universities, especially in the large cities and 
towns, are somewhat lax in their moral standards 
as regards matters upon which the puritan still 
lays great stress. 

In Berlin particularly, where there are some 
thirty-five hundred registered and nearly fifty 
thousand unregistered w^omen devoting them- 
selves to the seemingly incompatible ends of 
rapidly accumulating gold while frantically pur- 
suing pleasure, there is an amount of immorality 
unequalled in any capital in Europe. In the 
whole German Empire the average of illegiti- 
macy is ten per cent, but in Berlin the average 
for the last few years is twenty per cent. Out of 
every five children born in Berlin each year one 
is illegitimate! It is questionable whether the 
increasing demands of the army and navy re- 
quire such laxity of moral methods in providing 
therefor. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 311 

There is, however, a state church in Germany 
with its head in Berhn, and no doubt we may 
safely leave this matter in these better hands 
than ours. I beg to say that in mentioning this 
subject I am quoting unprejudiced scientific in- 
vestigators, who, I may say, agree, without a 
dissenting voice of importance, that Berlin has 
become the classical problem along such lines. 
In the endeavor to compete with the gayeties 
elsewhere, a laxity has been encouraged and per- 
mitted that has won for Berlin in the last ten 
years, an unrivalled position as a purveyor of 
after-dark pleasures. Berlin not only produces 
a disproportionate number of such people as 
Diotrephes, in manners, but also a veritable 
horde of those who are like unto the son of 
Bosor. 

After the sheltered home life and the severe 
discipline of the higher schools, a German youth 
is permitted a freedom unknown to us at the 
university. There is no record kept of how or 
where he spends his time. He matriculates at 
one or another of the universities, and for three, 
four, or, in the case of medical students, five 
years, he is free to work or not to work, as he 
pleases. 

There are, however, three factors that serve 
as bit and reins to keep him in order. The final 
examination is severe, thorough, and cannot be 



312 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

passed successfully by mere cramming; very few 
of the students have incomes which permit of a 
great range of dissipation; and not to pass the 
examination is a terrible defeat in life, which 
cuts a man off from further progress and leaves 
him disgraced. 

These are forces that count, and which prevail 
to keep all but the least serious within bounds. 
German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted 
together, so impossible to break into except 
through the recognized channels, that few men 
have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spir- 
its, the demonic confidence in themselves, that 
overrides such consideTations. 

We in America suffer from a superabundance 
of men of aleatory dispositions, men who love 
to play cards with the devil, who rejoice to 
wager their future, their reputation, their lives, 
against the world. I admit a sneaking fondness 
for them. They are a great asset, and a new 
country needs them, but if we have too many, 
Germany has too few. They are forever crying 
out in Germany for another Bismarck. When- 
ever in political matters, in foreign affairs, even 
in their religious controversies, things go wrong, 
men lift their hands and eyes to heaven and say, 
*'How different if Bismarck were here!" Bis- 
marck and two of his predecessors as nation- 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 313 

builders were not afraid to throw dice with the 
world, and what "the land of damned profess- 
ors" could not do, they did. 

When the young men from the Gymnasium 
come into the freedom of university life, they 
toss their heads a bit, kick up their heels, laugh 
long and loud at the Philistine, but just as every 
German climax is incomplete without tears, so 
they too are soon singing: "Ich weiss nicht was 
soil es bedeuten dass ich so traurig bin!" the 
gloom of the Teutoburger Wald settles down on 
them, and they buckle to and work with an 
enduring patience such as few other men in the 
world display, and join the great army here 
who, bitted and harnessed, are pulling the Vater- 
land to the front. 

The British Empire between 1800 and 1910 
grew from 1,500,000 square miles to 11,450,000 
square miles, and its trade from $400,000,000 
to $11,020,000,000; not to mention the United 
States of America, now considered to be of 
noticeable importance, though we are universally 
sneered at by the Germans, to an extent that no 
American dreams of who has not lived among 
them, as a land of dollars, and, from the point 
of view of book-learning, dullards. But it is 
this, none the less, that Germany envies, and 
has set out to rival and if possible to surpass. 



314 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

No wonder the training must be severe for the 
athletes who propose to themselves such a task. 

For a semester or two, perhaps for three, the 
German student gives himself up to the rollick- 
ing freedom of the corps student's life. That 
life is so completely misunderstood by the for- 
eigner that it deserves a few words of explana- 
tion. 

I am not yet old enough to envy youth, nor 
sourly sophisticated enough to deal sarcastically 
or even lightly with their worship and their 
creeds, that once I shared, and with which lately 
I have been, under the most hospitable circum- 
stances, invited to renew my acquaintance at the 
Commers and the Mensur. 

One may be no longer a constant worshipper 
at the shrine of blue eyes, pink cheeks, flaxen 
hair, and the enshrouding mystery of skirts, 
which make for curiosity and reverence in youth; 
one may have learned, however, the far more 
valuable lesson that the best women are so much 
nobler than the best men, that the best men 
may still kneel to the best women; just as the 
worst women surpass the worst men in con- 
sciencelessness, brutal selfishness, disloyalty, 
and degradation. The female bandit in society, 
or frankly on the war-path outside, takes her 
weapons from an armory of foulness and cruelty 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 315 

unknown to men; just as the heroines and angels 
among women fortify themselves in sanctuaries 
to which few, if any, men have the key. 

One returns, tlicrefore, to the playground of 
one's youth with not less but with more sympa- 
thy and understanding. Far from being "bru- 
talizing guilds," far from being mere unions for 
Swilling and slashing, the German corps, by their 
codes, and discipline, and standards of manners 
and honor, are, from the chivalrous point of 
view, the leaven of German student life. In 
these days many of them have club-houses of 
their own, where they take their meals in some 
cases and where they meet for their beer-drink- 
ing ceremonies. 

There is of course a wide range of expenditure 
by students at the German universities, whether 
they are members of the corps or not. At one 
of the smaller universities in a country town like 
Marburg, for example, a poor student, with a 
little tutoring and the system of frei Tisch — 
money left for the purpose of giving a free mid- 
day meal to poor students — may scrape along 
with an expenditure of as little as twenty dollars 
a month. A member of a good corps at this 
same university is well content with, and can do 
himself well on, seventy dollars a month. I 
have seen numbers of students' rooms, with bed. 



316 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

writing-table, and simple furniture, perhaps with 
a balcony where for many months in the year 
one may write and read, which rent for sixty 
dollars a year. One may say roughly that at the 
universities outside the large towns, and not in- 
cluding the fashionable universities, such as 
Bonn or Heidelberg, the student gets on com- 
fortably with fifty dollars a month. They have 
their coffee and rolls in the morning, their mid- 
day meal which they take together at a restau- 
rant, and their supper of cold meats, preserves, 
cheese, and beer where they will. For seventy- 
five cents a day a student can feed himself. 

The hours are Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle 
in his "Economics," and not a nursery rhymer, 
who wrote: "It is likewise well to rise before 
daybreak, for this contributes to health, wealth, 
and wisdom." "Early to bed and early to rise" 
is a classic. 

At Bonn, a mernber of one of the three more 
fashionable corps spends far more than these 
sums, and his habits may be less Spartan. The 
ridiculous expenditure of some of our mamma- 
bred undergraduates, who go to college primarily 
to cultivate social relations, are unknown any- 
where in Germany, for a student would make 
himself unpopularly conspicuous by extrava- 
gance. Two to three thousand dollars a year, 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS f517 

even ;it Bonn, as a mcmb(M' of llic Ix'st corps, 
would 1)0 amply sufficienl and is considered an 
extravagant exix'nditurc. 

When the Earl of Essex was sent to Cam- 
bridge in Queen Elizabeth's time, he was pro- 
vided with a deal table covered with baize, a 
truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs, and a wash- 
hand basin. The cost of all this was about $25. 
When students from all over Europe tramped 
to Paris to hear Abelard lecture, they begged 
their way. They were given special licenses as 
scholars to beg. Learning then, as it is still in 
Germany, alone of all the nations, was con- 
sidered to be a pious profession deserving well 
of the world. We do not even know the names 
of our scholars in America. How many Amer- 
icans have heard of Gibbs, the authority on the 
fundamental laws regulating the trend of trans- 
formation in chemical and physical processes, 
or of Hill and his theory of the moon, or of Hale 
who explains the mystery of sun spots and meas- 
ures the magnetic forces that play around the 
sun? How many Frenchmen know Pierron's 
translation of /Eschylus, or Patin's studies in 
Greek tragedies, or Charles ]\Liguin, or Maurice 
Croiset, or Paul ^Nlagou or Leconte de Lisle? 
whil(^ in England I ho mass of the people not 
only do not know llio names of their scholars. 



318 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

but distrust all mental processes that are super- 
canine. 

The origin of the Landmannschaften^ Bur- 
schenscJiaften, and the Corps among the stu- 
dents dates back to the days when the students 
aligned themselves with more rigidity than now, 
according to the various German states from 
which they came. The names of the corps still 
bear this suggestion, though nowadays the align- 
ment is rather social than geographical. The 
Burschenschaften societies of students had their 
origin in political opposition to this separation 
of the students into communities from the vari- 
ous states. The originators of the Burschen- 
schaften movement, for example, were eleven 
students at Jena. Sobriety and chastity were 
conditions of entrance, and "Honor, Liberty, 
Fatherland" w^ere their watchwords. It was 
deemed a point of honor that a member breaking 
his vows should confess and retire from the 
society. 

The societies of the Burschenschaften are still 
considered to have a political complexion and 
the corps proper have no dealings with them. 

In any given semester the number of students 
in one of these corps varies from as few as ten, 
to as many as twenty-five, depending, much as 
do our Greek-letter societies and college clubs, 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 310 

upon I lie number of available men coming up to 
the university. Certain corps arc composed al- 
most exclusively of noblemen, but none is dis- 
tinctly a rich man's club. 

An active member of a corps during his first 
two semesters may do a certain amount of seri- 
ous work, but as a rule it is looked upon as a 
time *'to loaf and invite one's soul," and little at- 
tempt is made to do more. Not a few men 
whom I have known, have not even entered 
a class-room during the two or three semesters 
of this blossoming period. 

I have spent many days and nights with these 
young gentlemen, at Heidelberg, at Leipsic, at 
Marburg, at Bonn, and been made one of them 
in their jollity and good-fellowship, and I have 
agreed, and still agree, that "^Yir sind die Ko- 
nige der Welt, wir sind's durch unsere Freude." 

They are by no means the swashbuckling, 
bullying, dissolute companions painted by those 
who know nothing about them. They may 
drink more beer than we deem necessary for 
health, or even for comfort; and they may take 
their exercise with a form of sword practice that 
we do not esteem, they may be proud of the 
scars of these imitation duels, but these are all 
matters of tradition and taste. 

AYhen one writes of eating and drinking, it is 



320 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

hardly fair to make comparisons from a personal 
stand-point. An adult of average weight re- 
quires each day 125 grams of proteid or building 
material, 500 grams of carbohydrates, 50 grams 
of fat. This equals, in common parlance, one 
pound of bread, one-half pound of meat, one- 
quarter pound of fat, one pound of potatoes, one- 
half pint of milk, one-quarter pound of eggs, 
assuming that one egg equals two ounces, and 
one-eighth pound of cheese. Divided into three 
meals, this means: for breakfast, two slices of 
bread and butter and two eggs; for dinner: one 
plateful potato soup, large helping of meat with 
fat, four moderate-sized potatoes, one slice bread 
and butter; for tea: one glass of milk and two 
slices of bread and butter; for supper: two slices 
of bread and butter and two ounces of cheese. 

Plain white bread supplies more caloric, or 
energy, for the price than any other one food, 
and, with one or two exceptions, more proteid, 
or building material, than any other one food. 

One to one and a half fluid ounces of alcohol 
is about the amount which can be completely 
oxidized in the body in a day. This quantity is 
contained in two fluid ounces of brandy or whis- 
key, five fluid ounces of port or sherry, ten of 
claret or champagne or other light wines, and 
twenty of bottled beer. All this means that a 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 321 

pint of claret, or two glasses of champagne, or a 
bottle of beer, or a glass of wliiskey with some 
aerated water during the day will not hurt a 
man, and adds perhaps to the " agreeableness of 
life," as Matthew Arnold phrases it. At any 
rate, this table of contents is a much safer stand- 
ard of comparison, in judging the eating and 
drinking habits of other people, than either your 
habits or mine. 

The German student probably drinks too 
much, and it is said by safe authorities in Ger- 
many that his heart, liver, and kidneys suffer; 
but he has been at it a long time, and in certain 
fields of intellectual prowess he is still supreme, 
and as we only drink with him now occasionally 
when he is our host, perhaps he had best be left 
to settle these questions without our criticism. 

In general terms, I have always considered, as 
a test of myself and others, that a healthy man is 
one who lies down at night without fear, rises in 
the mornini^ cheerfullv, crocs to a dav's serious 
work of some kind rejoicing in the prospect, 
meets his friends gayly, and loves his loves bet- 
icv than liinisclf. 

It is folly lo inaiiilain, Ihal il does not require 
pluck and courage to stand up to a swinging 
Srhlagrr, and take your punishuKMit without 
flinching, and then to sit without a nmrmur 



322 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

while your wounds are sewn up and bandaged. 
I cannot help my preference for foot-ball, or 
base-ball, or rowing, or a cross-country run with 
the hounds, or grouse or pheasant shooting, or 
the shooting of bigger game, or the driving of 
four horses, or the handling of a boat in a breeze 
of wind, but the "world is so full of a number of 
things" that he has more audacity than I who 
proposes to weigh them all in the scales of his 
personal experience, and then to mark them with 
their relative values. 

First of all, it is to be remembered that these 
Schldger contests between students are in no 
sense duels; a duel being the setting by one man 
of his chance of life against another's chance, 
both with deadly weapons in their hands. These 
contests with the Schldger at the German uni- 
versities, wrongly called duels, are so conducted 
that there is no possibility of permanent or even 
very serious injury to the combatants. The 
attendants who put them into their fighting 
harness, the doctors who look after them during 
the contest and who care for them afterward, 
are old hands at the game, and no mistakes are 
made. 

There is no feeling of animosity between the 
swordsmen as a rule. They are merely candi- 
dates for promotion in their own corps who 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 323 

meet candidates from other corps, and prove 
their skill and courage aiif die Mensur, or figlit- 
ing-groiind. 

When a youth joins a corps he chooses a coun- 
sellor and friend, a Leibbursch, as he is called, 
from among the older men, whose special care it 
is, to see to it that he behaves himself properly 
in his new environment; he pledges himself to 
respect the traditions and standards of the corps, 
and to keep himself worthy of respect among his 
fellows, and among those whom he meets out- 
side. A companionship and guardianship not un- 
like this, used to exist in the Greek-letter society 
to which I once belonged. He of course abides 
by the rules and regulations of the order. It is 
a time of freedom in one sense, but it is a free- 
dom closely guarded, and there is rigid disci- 
pline here as in practically all other depart- 
ments of life in Germany. 

The young students, or Fiichse, as they are 
called, are instructed in the way they should go 
by the older students, or Burschen, whose au- 
thority is absolute. This authority extends even 
to the people whom they may know and consort 
with, either in the university or in the town, and 
to all questions of personal behavior, debts, dis- 
sipation, manners, and general bearing. In 
many of the corps there are high standards and 



324 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

old traditions as regards these matters, and every 
member must abide by them. Every corps stu- 
dent is a patriot, ready to sing or fight for 
Xaiser and Vaterland, and sociahsm, even criti- 
cism of his country or its rulers, are as out of 
place among them as in the army or navy. 
They are particular as to the men whom they 
admit, and a man's lineage and bearing and rela- 
tions with older members of the corps are care- 
fully canvassed before he is admitted to member- 
ship. Both the present Emperor and one of his 
sons have been members of a corps. 

Let us spend a day with them. It is Saturday. 
We get up rather late, having turned in late after 
the Commers of Friday, when the men who are 
to fight the next day were drunk to, sung to, and 
wished good fortune on the morrow, and sent 
home early. The trees are turning green at 
Bonn, the shrubs are feeling the air with hesi- 
tating blossoms, you walk out into the sunshine 
as gay as a lark, for the champagne and the beer 
of the night before were good, and you sang away 
the fumes of alcohol before you went to bed. 
There was much laughter, and a speech or two 
of welcome for the guest, responded to at 1 a. m. 
in German, French, English, and gestures with a 
beer-mug, and punctuated with the appreciative 
comments of the company. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 32.5 

It was a lime to slougli ofl" I wen I y years or so 
and Icl Adam liavc liis chance, an<l I lie company 
was of genllenien wlio sj^mpatliize with and un- 
derstand the "Alter Ilerr," and are only too de- 
lighted if he will let the springs of youth bubhle 
and sparkle for them, and glad to encourage him 
to return to reminiscences of his prowess in love 
and war, and ready to pledge him in bumper 
after bumper success in the days to come. You 
might think it a carouse. Far from it. 

The ceremony is presided over by a stern 
young gentleman, who never for a moment al- 
lows any member of the company to get out of 
hand, and who, when a speech is to be made, 
makes it with grace and complete ease of manner. 
Indeed, these young fellows surprise one with 
their easy mastery of the art of speech-making. 
Even the spokesman for the Fiichsey or younger 
students, at the lower end of the table, rises and 
pledges himself and his companions in a few 
graceful words, with certain sly references to the 
possibility that the guest may not have lost his 
appreciation of the charms of German woman- 
kind, which the guest in question here and now, 
and fi-;inlvly admits; bnl not a word of coarse- 
ness, not a liinl lli;it totters on the brink of an 
indiscretion, and what iiiglKM- praise can one give 
to speech-making on sucli an occasion! 



326 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

My particular host and introducer to his old 
corps is youngest of all, and though seemingly as 
lavish in his potations as any one, sings his way 
home with me, head as clear, legs as steady, eyes 
as bright, as though it were 10 a. m. and not 
2 A. M., and as though I had not seemed to see 
his face during most of the evening through the 
bottom of a beer-mug. 

That was the night before. The next morning 
we stroll over to the room where the Schldger 
contests are to take place. It is packed with stu- 
dents in their different-colored caps. Beer there 
is, of course, but no smoking allowed till the 
bouts are over. 

I go down to see the men dressing for the fray. 
They strip to the waist, put on a loose half -shirt 
half -jacket of cotton stuff, then a heavily padded 
half-jerkin that covers them completely from 
chin to knee. The throat is wrapped round and 
round with heavy silk bandages. The right arm 
and hand are guarded with a glove and a heavily 
padded leather sleeve; all these impervious to 
any sword blow. The eyes are guarded with steel 
spectacle frames fitted with thick glass. Noth- 
ing is exposed but the face and the top of the 
head. The exposed parts are washed with anti- 
septics, as are also the swords, repeatedly during 
the bout. The sword, hilt and blade together. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 327 

measures one hundred and five centimetres. 
There is a heavy, well-guarded hilt, and a pliable 
blade with a square end, sharp as a razor on 
both edges for some six inches from the end. 

The position in the sword-play is to face 
squarely one's opponent, the sword hand well 
over the head with the blade held down over the 
left shoulder. The distance between the com- 
batants is measured by placing the swords be- 
tween them lengthwise, each one with his chest 
against the hilt of his own weapon, and this 
marks the proper distance between them. When 
they are brought in and face one another, the 
umpire, with a bow, explains the situation. The 
two seconds with swords crouch each beside his 
man, ready to throw up the swords and stop the 
fighting between each bout. Two other men 
stand ready to hold the rather heavily weighted 
sword arm of their comrade on the shoulder dur- 
ing the pauses. Two others willi cotton dipped in 
an antiseptic preparation keep the points of the 
swords clean. Still another official keeps a rec- 
ord in a book, of each cut or scratch, the length 
of time, the number of bouts, and the result. 
The doctor decides when a wound is bad enough 
to close the contest. 

At the word "Los!" the blades sing and 
whistle in the air, the work being done almost 



328 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

wholly with the wrist, some four blows are ex- 
changed, there is a pause, then at it again, till 
the allotted number of bouts are over, or one or 
the other has been cut to the point where the 
doctor decides that there shall be no more. We 
follow them downstairs again, where, after being 
carefully washed, the combatants are seated in 
a chair one after the other, their friends crowd 
around and count the stitches as the surgeon 
works, and comment upon what particular twist 
of the wrist produced such and such a gash. 

I have seen scores of these contests, and during 
the last year as many as a dozen or more. There 
is no record of any one ever having been seriously 
injured; indeed, I doubt if there are not more 
men injured by too much beer than too much 
sword-play. 

It is perhaps expected that the foot-ball player 
should sneer at bull-fighting; the boxer at 
fencing; the rider to hounds at these Schldger 
bouts; and that we game-players should say con- 
temptuous things of the contests of our neigh- 
bors. Personally, if one could eliminate the 
horse from the contest, I go so far as to believe 
that even bull-fighting is better than no game 
at all. As for these Schldger contests, they seem 
to me no more brutal than our own foot-ball, 
which is only brutal to the shivering crowd of 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 329 

the too tender wlio have never played IL, an<I 
not so dangerous as polo or i)ig-slicking, and a 
thousand times better than no contest at all. 

I am not of those who believe that the human 
body and that human life are the most precious 
and valuable things in the world. They are only 
servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls 
that ought to be their masters. Without train- 
ing, without obedience, without the instant will- 
ingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters, 
the human body and human hfe are contemptible 
and unworthy. I claim that it braces the mind 
to expose the body; that an education in the pre- 
pared emergencies of games and sport, is the best 
training for the unprepared emergencies with 
which life is strewn. 

The most cruel people I have ever known were 
gentle enough physically, but they were hard 
and sour in their social relations, and often 
enough called "good " by their fellows. The dis- 
appointments, losses, sorrows, defeats, of each 
one of us, trouble, even though imperceptibly, 
the waters of life that we all must drink of; and 
to ignore or to rejoice at these misfortunes is only 
nuiddying what we ourselves must drink. I be- 
lieve the hardening of I he Ijody goes some way 
toward softening I lie Jieart and cleansing the 
S(MiK and toward filliiii,' a man wilh that cheerful 



330 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

charity that supplies the oil of intercourse in a 
creaking world of rival interests. 

To see a youth swinging a sword at his fellow's 
face with delighted energy; to see a man riding 
ojff vigorously at polo; to see a man hard at it 
with the gloves on; to see another flinging him- 
self and his horse over a wall or across a ditch; 
to see a man taking his nerves in hand, to make 
a two-yard put for a half, when he is one down 
and two to play; to see these things without 
seeing that — perhaps often enough in a muddy 
sort of way — the soul is making a slave of 
the body, that courage is mastering cowardice, 
that in an elementary way the youth is learn- 
ing how to give himself generously when some 
great emergency calls upon him to give his 
life for an ideal, a tradition, a duty, is to see 
nothing but brutality, I admit. Who does not 
know that the Carthaginians at Cannse were one 
thing, the Carthaginians at Capua another! I 
have therefore no acidulous effeminacy to pour 
upon these German Schldger bouts. I prefer 
other forms of exercise, but I am a hardened 
believer in the manhood bred of contests, and 
though their ways are not my ways, I prefer 
a world of slashed faces to a world of soft 
ones. 

Prosit, gentlemen! Better your world than 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 331 

the world of Semitic haggling and exchange; of 
caution and smoothness; of the disasters born of 
daintiness; of sHding over the ship's side in 
women's clothes to live, when it was a moral 
duty to be drowned. Better your world than 
any such worlds as those, for 

"If one sliould dream that such a world began 
In some slow devil's heart that hated man, 
Who should deny it?" 

Milton lield that *'a complete and generous 
education fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, 
and magnanimously all the offices, both private 
and public, of peace and war." It is my opinion 
that the Schldgcr has its part to play in this 
matter of education. A mind trained to the 
keenness of a razor's edge, but without a sound 
body controlled by a steel will, is of small ac- 
count in the world. The whole aim of education 
is, after all, to make a man independent, to make 
the intelligence reach out in keen quest of its 
object, and at its own and not at another's bid- 
ding. An education is intended to make a man 
his own master, and so far as any man is not 
his own master, in just so far is he uneducated. 
Wlial lie knows, or does not know, of books does 
not alter the fact. 

Much of the Pharisaism and priggishness on 



332 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the subject of education arises from the fact that 
the world is divided into two camps as regards 
knowledge: those who believe that the astrono- 
mer alone knows the stars, and those who be- 
lieve that he knows them best who sleeps in the 
open beneath them. In reality, neither type of 
mind is complete without the other. 

To turn from any theoretical discussion of 
the subject, it remains to be said that Germany 
has trained her whole population into the best 
working team in the world. Without the natu- 
ral advantages of either England or America she 
has become the rival of both. Her superior men- 
tal training has enabled her to wrest wealth from 
by-products, and she saves and grows rich on 
what America wastes. Whether Germany has 
succeeded in giving the ply of character to her 
youth, as she folds them in her educational fac- 
tories, I sometimes doubt. That she has not 
made them independent and ready to grapple 
with new situations, and strange peoples, and 
swift emergencies, their own past and present 
history shows. 

It is a very strenuous and economical exist- 
ence, however, for everybody, and it requires a 
politically tame population to be thus driven. 
The dangerous geographical situation of Ger- 
many, ringed round by enemies, has made sub- 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSOI^S 333 

mission lo hard work, and lo an iron autocratic 
government necessary. To be a nation a I all it 
was necessary to obey and to submit, lo sacii- 
fice and to save. These things they have been 
taught as have no otlier luu'opean people. 
Greater wealth, increased power, a larger role 
in the world, are bringing new problems. Edu- 
cation thus far has been in the direction of fitting 
each one into his place in a great machine, and 
less attention has been paid to the development 
of that elasticity of mind which makes for inde- 
pendence; but men educate themselves into inde- 
pendence, and that time is coming swiftly for 
Germany. 

"Also he hath set the world in their heart," 
and one wonders what this population, hitherto 
so amenable, so economical, and so little worldly, 
will do with this new world. The temptations of 
wealth, the sirens of luxury, the opportunities 
for amusement and dissipation, are all to the 
fore in the Germany of to-day as they were cer- 
tainly not twenty-five years ago. Ulysses, alas, 
docs not bind himself to the mast very tightly 
as he passes these enchanted isles of modern 
luxury. "The land of damned i)rofessors" has 
IcanuNl its lessons fi'om those same professors 
so well, llial it is now ready to take a post- 
graduate course in world polities; and as I said 



334 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in the beginning, some of our friends are put- 
ting the word "damned" in other parts of this, 
and other sentences, when they describe the 
rival prowess and progress of the Germans. 



VII 

THE DISTAFF SIDE 

MADAME NECKER writes of women: 
"Les femmes tienncnt la place de ces 
legers duvets qu'on introduit dans les 
caisses de porcelaine; on n'y fait point d'atten- 
tion, mais si on les retire, tout se brise." 

When one sees women and dogs harnessed to- 
gether dragging carts about the streets; when 
one sees women doing the lighter work of sweep- 
ing up leaves and collecting rubbish in the for- 
ests and on the larger estates; doing the garden- 
ing work in Saxony and other places; when one 
sees them by the hundreds working bare-legged in 
the beet-fields in Silesia and elsewhere through- 
out Germany; when one reads "Vicle Weibeu 
sind gut weil sie niclit wissen wie man cs machen 
muss um bose zu sein," and "Der Mann nach 
Freiheit strebt, das Weib nach Sitte," two 
phrases from the German classics, Lessing and 
Goethe; when one recalls the shameless careless- 
ness of Goethe's treatment of all women; of how 
his love-poems were sometimes sent by the same 
mail lo the lady and to the press; and the un- 
restrainctl worship of Goethe by the German 

335 



336 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

women of his day ; when one sees time and time 
again all over Germany the women shouldered 
into the street while the men keep to the side- 
walk; when one sees in the streets, railway car- 
riages, and other public conveyances, the insult- 
ing staring to which every woman is subjected 
if she have a trace of good looks, one realizes 
that at any rate Madame Necker was not writing 
of German women. Let me add that so far as 
the great Goethe is concerned, it is by no Pu- 
ritan yard-stick that I am measuring him, but 
by the German's own high standard which de- 
spises any mating of true sentiment with com- 
mercialism. " Beatus ille qui procul negotiis," 
certainly applies to one's affairs of the heart. 

In the gallery at Dresden, where the loveliest 
mother's face in all the world shines down upon 
you from Raphael's canvas like a benediction, 
there is a small picture by Rubens, "The Judg- 
ment of Paris." The three goddesses — induitur 
formosa est; exuitur ipsa forma est — have taken 
literally the compliment paid to a certain beau- 
tiful customer by a renowned French dress- 
maker: "Un rien et madame est habillee!" 
They are coquettishly revealing their claims to 
the Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds in his 
hand. Paris and his friend are in the most non- 
chalant of attitudes. They could not be more 
indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were 



THE DISTAFF SIDE .'Ji37 

they dandies judging the class for costermonger's 
donkeys at a provincial horse-show. Tlic (lirce 
most heauliful women in the world are s(|uirni- 
ing and posturing for praise, and a decision, Ije- 
fore two as sophisticated and self-satisfied men 
as one will ever see on canvas or off it. 

The same subject is treated by a man of the 
same breed, but of a later day, named Feuer- 
bach, and his picture hangs, I think, in Breslau. 
Here again the supersuperiority of the male is 
portrayed. 

In the Church of Saint Sebaldus at Nurem- 
berg, there is a delightful mural painting which 
makes one merry even to recall it. The subject 
is the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are 
being lectured by an elderly man in flowing 
robes with a long white beard. His beard alone 
would more than supply Adam and Eve with 
the covering they lack. In an easy attitude, 
with neither haste nor anxiety, he is pointing out 
to them the error of their ways. He is as de- 
tached in manner as though he were Professor 
Wundt, lecturing to us at Leipsic on the fourth 
dimension of space. Adam is somewhat de- 
jected and reclines upon the ground. Eve, un- 
abashed, with nothing on but the apple which 
she is munching, is evidenlly in a reckless mood. 
She looks like a child of fifleen, willi Ikm* hair 
down her back; the defiance of her alliludo is 



338 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

that of a naughty Httle girl. The world-old 
problem is under discussion, but with an air of 
good humor and cheerfulness on the part of the 
lecturer, as though there were still time in the 
world, as though hurry were an undiscovered 
human attribute, as though possibly the world 
would still go on even if the problem were left 
unsolved, and this first leafy parliament ad- 
journed sine die. 

They were so much wiser than are we ! They 
knew then that there would be other sessions of 
congress, and that it was not necessary to decide 
everything on that spring day of the year One. 
But here again in this picture it is the male atti- 
tude toward the woman that is of chief interest. 
Adam is plainly bored. What if the woman has 
broken into the sanctuary of knowledge, she will 
only be the bigger fool, he seems to say. As for 
the professor in the red robes, his easy, patron- 
izing manner is indicative enough of his mental 
top-loftiness toward the woman question. You 
can almost hear him say as he strokes his beard : 
"Kuche, Kinder, Kirche!" 

From the fields of Silesia, where the beet in- 
dustry is possible only because there are hun- 
dreds of bare-legged girls and women to single 
the beets, a process not possible by machinery, 
at a wage of from twenty-five to thirty cents a 
day, to these German paintings with their illus- 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 339 

trations of the spiritual and moral attitude of 
the German man toward the German woman, 
one sees everywhere and among practically all 
classes an attitude of condescension toward 
women among the polite and polished; an atti- 
tude of carelessness bordering on contempt 
among the rude. Their attitude is like that of 
the Jews who cry in their synagogues, "Thank 
God for not having made me a woman!" 

One can judge, not incorrectly, of the status 
of women in a country by the manners and habits 
of the men, entirely dissociated from their rela- 
tions to women. When one sees men equipped 
with small mirrors and small brushes and combs, 
which they use in all sorts of public places, even 
in the streets, in the street-cars, in omnibuses, 
and in the theatres; when one opens the door 
to a knock to find a gentleman, a small mirror 
in one hand and a tiny brush in the other, pre- 
paring himself for his entrance into your hotel 
sitting-room; you are bound to think that these 
persons are in the childhood days of personal 
hygiene, as it cannot be denied that they are, 
but also that their women folk must be still in 
the Eryops age of social sophistication, not to 
put a stop to such bucolic methods of grooming. 
Even though the Eryops is a gigantic tadpole, a 
hundred times older than the oldest remains of 
man, this is hardly an exaggeration. 



340 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

In no other country in the cultured group of 
nations is the animal man so naively vain, so de- 
liciously self-conscious, so untrained in the ways 
of the polite world, so serenely oblivious, not 
merely of the rights of women but of the simple 
courtesy of the strong to the weak. It is the only 
country I have visited where the hands of the men 
are better cared for than the hands of the women; 
and this is not a pleasant commentary upon the 
question of who does the rough work, and who 
has the vanity and who the leisure for a meticu- 
lous toilet. One must not forget that regular and 
systematic cleansing of the person is a very 
modern fashion. As late as the early part of 
the nineteenth century, tooth-brushes were not 
allowed in certain French convents, being looked 
upon as a luxury. Cleanliness was not very com- 
mon a century and a half ago In any country. 
In 1770 the publication of Monsieur Perrel's 
" Pogonotomie, ou I'x^rt d'apprendre a se raser 
soi-meme," created a sensation among fashion- 
able people, and enthusiasts studied self -shaving. 
The author of "Lois de la Galanterie" In 1640 
writes: "Every day one should take pains to 
wash one's hands, and one should also wash one's 
face almost as often!" 

The copious streams of hot and cold water, 
turned into a porcelain tub at any time of the 



TIIK DISTAFF SIDE 341 

day or niglil; the brushes, and soaps, and towels, 
and toilet waters, and powders of our day were 
quite unknown lo our not far-ofF ancestors. 
The oft-rei)cated and minute ablutions of our 
day are almost as modern as bicycles, and not 
as ancient as the railways. The Germans are 
only a little behind the rest of us in this soap and 
water cult, that is all. 

In the streets and public conveyances of the 
cities, in the beer-gardens and restaurants in the 
country, in the summer and winter resorts from 
the Baltic to the Black Forest, from the Rhine 
to Bohemia, it is ever the same. They seat 
themselves at table first, and have their napkins 
hanging below their Adam's apples before their 
women are in their chairs; hundreds of times 
have I seen their women arrive at table after 
they were seated, not a dozen times have I seen 
their masters rise to receive them; their prefer- 
ence for the inside of the sidewalk is practically 
universal; even officers in uniform, but this is 
of rare occurrence, will take their places in a 
railway carriage, all of them smoking, where 
two ladies are sitting, and wait till requested 
before throwing their cigars away, and what ci- 
gars! and then by smiles and innuendoes make 
the ladies so uncomfortable that they are driven 
from the carriai^e. Even eleven hundrcfl vears 



342 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ago the German woman had rather a rough time 
of it. Charlemagne had nine wives, but he 
seems to have been unduly uxorious or unweary- 
ing in his infatuations. He made the wife travel 
with him, and all nine of them died, worn out 
by travel and hardship. There is a constancy 
of companionship which is deadly. 

The inconveniences and discomfort of going 
about alone, for ladies in Germany, I have heard 
not from a dozen, but in a chorus from German 
ladies themselves. I am reciting no grievances 
of my compatriots, for I have seen next to noth- 
ing of Americans for a year or more, and I have 
no personal complaints, for these soft advent- 
urers scent danger quickly, and give the masters 
of the world, whether male or female, a wide 
berth. 

These gross manners are the result of two fac- 
tors in German life that it is well to keep in 
mind. They are a poor people, only just emerg- 
ing from poverty, slavery, and disaster; poor 
not only in possessions, but poor in the experi- 
ence of how to use them. They do not know 
how to use their new freedom. They are as 
awkward in this new world of theirs, of greater 
wealth and opportunity, as unyoked oxen that 
have strayed into city streets. The abject 
deference of the women, who know nothing 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 343 

better iliaii Ihcse parochial masters, adds to 
their sense of their own importance. It is 
largely the women themselves who make their 
men insupportable. 

The other factor is the rigid caste system of 
their social habits. There is no association be- 
tween the officers, the nobility, the officials, the 
cultured classes, and the middle and lower classes. 
The public schools and universities are learning 
shops; they do not train youths in character, 
manners, or in the ways of the world. They do 
not play together, or work together, or amuse 
themselves together. The creeds and codes, 
habits and manners of the better classes are, 
therefore, not allowed to percolate and permeate 
those less experienced. There is no word for gen- 
tleman in German. The words gebildctcr and a7i- 
sUhidiger are used, and it is significant to notice 
that the stress is thus laid on mental develop- 
ment or upon obedience to formal rules. A man 
may be a very great gentleman and a true gentle- 
man and not be a scholar. The late Duke of 
Devonshire cared more for horses than for books 
and pictures, and Abraham Lincoln was one of 
the greatest gentlemen of all time. 

In Homburg one day I saw a tall, fine-looking, 
elderly man step aside and off the sidewalk to 
let two ladies pass. It was for Germany a no- 
ticeable act. He turned out to hv a famous 



344 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

general then in waiting upon the Emperor. 
There are not a few such courtly gentlemen in 
Germany, not a few whose knightliness compares 
with that of any gentleman in the world. Alas 
for the great bulk of the Germans, they never 
come into contact with them, their example is 
lost, their leaven of high breeding and courtesy 
does not lighten the bourgeois loaf ! In America 
and in England we are all threading our way in 
and out among all classes. We are much more 
democratic. Men of every class are in contact 
with men of every other, we play together and 
work together, and consequently the level of 
manners and habits is higher. This state of 
things is less marked in south Germany than 
in Prussia, but is more or less true everywhere. 
But how can this be possible, I hear it replied, 
in that land where every officer clacks his heels 
together with a report like an exploding torpedo, 
ducks his head from his rigid vertebrse, and then 
bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every 
civilian of any standing does the same.^ I am 
not writing of the nobility and of the corps of 
officers in this connection. No doubt there are 
black sheep among them, though I have not 
met them. Of the many scores of them whom 
I have met, whom I have ridden with, dined 
with, romped with, drunk with, travelled with, I 
have only to say that they are as courteous, as 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 345 

uinvillini;' lo oflVnd or lo lake aflvantage, as arc 
l)ra\'(' iiKMi ill oilier coiinlrics I know. I am 
writing of the average man and woman, of those 
who make up the bulk of every population, of 
those upon whom it depends whether a national 
life is healthy or otherwise. 

The very stiffness of these mannerisms, the 
clacking of heels, the ducking of heads, the kiss- 
ing of hands, the countless grave formalities 
among the men themselves, are all indicative of 
social weakness. They are afraid to walk with- 
out the crutches of certain formulae, of certain 
hard-and-fast rules, of certain laws that they 
worship and fall down before. Slavery is still 
upon them. Escaped from a bodily master they 
fly to the refuge of a moral and spiritual one. 
These formalities are prescribed forms which 
they wear as they wear uniforms; they are not 
the result of innate consideration. 

Uniform-wearing is a passion among the Ger- 
mans, and may be included as still another indi- 
cation of the universal desire to take refuge 
behind forms, and laws, and fixed customs, the 
universal desire to shrink from depending upon 
llieir own judgment and initiative. They will 
not even bow or kiss a lady's lian<l, williout a 
prescription from a social physician whom they 
trust. 

The German oflieials are always ofTieials, al- 



346 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ways addressed and addressing others punctil- 
iously by their titles. They do not throw off 
officialdom outside their duties and their offices 
as we do, but they glory in it. We throw off our 
uniforms as soon as may be; we feel hampered 
by them. This leads to a feeling on the part of 
the Germans that we are too free and easy, and 
not respectful enough toward our own dignity 
or toward theirs. We feel, on the other hand, 
that it is a farce to go to the every-day markets 
of life, whether for daily food or for daily social 
intercourse, with the bullion and certified checks 
of our official dignity; we go rather with the 
small change that jingles in all pockets alike, 
and is ready to be handed out for the frequent 
and unimportant buying and selling of the day 
and hour. We look upon this grallatory attitude 
toward life as artificial and hampering, and pre- 
fer to walk among our neighbors as much as 
possible upon our own feet. 

I am not pretending to fix standards of eti- 
quette. I can quite understand that when we 
grab the hand of the German's wife and shake 
it like a pump-handle instead of bowing over it; 
that when we nod cheerfully to him in the street 
with a wave of the hand or a lifting of a cane or 
umbrella instead of taking off our hat; that 
when we fail to address both him and his lady 
with the title belonging to them, no matter how 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 347 

commonplace that title, we shock his prejudices 
and his code of good manners. 

If there is a stranger, a lady, in the drawing- 
room before dinner the German men line up in 
single file and ask to be presented to her. If the 
hidy is tall and handsome and the party a large 
one, it looks almost like an ovation. If you go 
to dine at an officers' mess the men think it their 
duty to come up and ask to be presented to you. 
They wear their mourning bands on the forearm 
instead of the upperarm; they wear their wed- 
ding-rings on the fourth finger of the right hand; 
many of them wear rather more conspicuous 
jewelry than we consider to be in good taste. 

The sofa, too, plays a role in German house- 
holds and offices for which I have sought in vain 
for an explanation. Not even German archse- 
ology supplies a historical ancestry for this sofa 
cult. It is the place of honor. If you go to tea 
you are enthroned on the sofa. Even if you go 
to an office, say of the police, or of the manager 
of the city slaughter-house, or of the hospital 
superintendent, you are manoeuvred about till 
they get you on the sofa, generally behind a table. 
I soon discovered that this was the seat of honor. 
Sofas have tlunr i)1;k'c in life, I admit. There 
are sofas that we all remember with tears, willi 
tenderness, with reverence. They have been 
the boards upon which we first ai^peared in the 



348 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

role of lover perhaps; or where we have fondled 
and comforted a discouraged child; or where we 
have pumped new ambitions and larger life into 
a weaker brother; or where we have tossed in 
the agony of grief or disappointment; or where 
we have waited drearily and alone the result of 
a consultation of moral or physical life and death 
in the next room. Indeed, this all reminds me 
that I could write an essay on sofas that would be 
poignant, touching, autobiographical, luminous, 
as could most other men, but this would not ex- 
plain the position of the sofa in Germany in the 
least. "Travels on a Sofa" — I must do it one 
day, and perhaps, with more serious study of the 
subject, light may be thrown upon this question 
of the sofa in Germany. 

Even at large and rather formal dinner-parties 
the host bows and drinks to his guests, first one 
and then another. At the end of the meal, in 
many households, it is the custom to bow and 
kiss your hostess's hand and say '' Mahlzeit/' a 
shortened form of "May the meal be blessed to 
you." You also shake hands with the other 
guests and say " Mahlzeit.'" In some smarter 
houses this is looked upon as old-fashioned and is 
not done. I look upon it as a charming custom, 
and think it a pity that it should be done away 
with. 

Young unmarried girls and women courtesy to 



THE DISTAFF SIDE ,'Ml) 

tlie elder wuiiicu and kiss Uicir liands, also a 
custom I approve. On the other liand, where a 
stalwart officer appears in a small drawiiii^-rooni 
and seats himself at the slender tea-table For a 
ciij) of afternoon tea, holding his sword by his side 
or between his legs, that seems to me an unneces- 
sary precaution, even when Americans are pres- 
ent, for many of us nowadays go about unarmed. 

Except on official or formal occasions it seems 
a matter of questionable good taste to appear, 
say in a hotel restaurant, with one's breast hung 
with medals or with orders on one's coat or in 
the button-hole. Let 'em find out what a big 
boy am I without help from self-imposed placards 
seems to me to be perhaps the more modest way. 
The method in vogue in Japanese temples, where 
the worshii)pers jangle a bell to call the attention 
of the gods to their prayers or offerings, seems 
out of place where the god is merely the casual 
man in the street, in a Berlin restaurant. 

At more than one dinner the soup is followed 
by a meat course, after which comes the fish. 
This does not mean that the dinners are not 
good. I fondly recall a dish of sauerkraut l)oiled 
in white wine and served in a pineapple. I may 
not give names, but llie diiuiers of Mr. and Mrs. 
Fourlli of Oeceinbcr, of ^Frs. Twenly-firsl of 
Januarw of Mr. and Mrs. Thirtieth t)f January, 
and of Mr. and Mrs. l'\>l)ni:irv First, and others 



350 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

rank very high in my gastronomic calendar. Do 
not imagine from what I have written that Lucul- 
lus has left no disciples in Germany. I could 
easily add a page to the list I have mentioned, 
and because we look upon some of these customs 
of the German as absurd is no reason for for- 
getting that he often, and from his stand-point 
rightly, looks upon us as boors. I like the Ger- 
mans and I pretend to have learned very much 
from them. To sneer at superficial differences 
is to lose all profit from intercourse with other 
peoples. Goethe is right, "Uberall lernt man 
nur von dem, den man liebt!" The argument 
is only all on our side when we are impervious to 
impressions and to other standards of manners 
and morals than our own. 

"Am Ende hangen wir docli ab 
Von Kj-eaturen die wir macliten" 

are two lines at least from the second part of 
"Faust" that we can all understand. 

It is sometimes thrown at us Americans that 
we love a title, and that we are not averse to the 
ornamentation of our names with pseudo and 
attenuated "Honorables" and "Colonels" and 
"Judge" and so on; and I am bound to admit 
the impeachment, for I blush at some of my be- 
colonelled and becaptained friends, and wonder 
at their rejoicing over such effeminate honorifics. 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 351 

especially those colonelcies born of clattering be- 
iiind a civilian governor, on a badly ridden horse, 
a title which may be compared with that most 
attenuated title of all, that of a Texan, who 
when asked why he was called "colonel" replied, 
that he had married the widow of a colonel! 

I prefer *'Esqr." to "Mr." merely because it 
makes it easier to assort the daily mail; "Mr.," 
"Mrs.," and "Miss" are so easily taken for one 
another on an envelope, and particularly at 
Christmas time this more distinctly legible title 
avoids the deplorable misdirection of the secrets 
of Santa Claus; aside from that I am happy to 
be addressed merely by my name, like any other 
sovereign. 

We are, too, somewhat overexcited when for- 
eign royalties appear among us. "What wud 
ye do if ye were a king an' come to this coun- 
thry?" asked Mr. Hennessy. 

"Well," said Mr. Dooley, "there's wan thing 
I wuddent do. I wuddent r-read th' Declaration 
iv Independence. I'd be afraid I'd die laughin'." 

In Germany not only are titles showered upon 
the populace, but it is distinctly and officially 
stated by what title the office-holder shall be 
addressed. 

In a case I know, a certain lady failed to sign 
herself to one of the small officials working upon 



352 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

her estate as, let us say, "I remain very sincerely 
yours," or its German equivalent; whereupon 
the person addressed wrote and demanded that 
communications addressed to him should be 
signed in the regulation manner. A lawyer was 
consulted, and it was found that a similar case 
had been taken to the courts and decided in 
favor of the recipient of wounded vanity. 

In hearty and manly opposition to this atti- 
tude toward life is the example of Admiral X. 
He had served long and gallantly, and just before 
he retired a friend said to him: *'I hear that 
they're going to knight you." "By God, sir, 
not without a court-martial!" was the prompt 
reply. Indeed, things have come to such a pass 
in England that the offer of a knighthood to a 
gentleman of lineage, breeding, and real dis- 
tinction, has been for years looked upon as either 
a joke or an insult. 

Not so among my German friends ; they have 
a ravenous appetite for these flimsy tickets of 
passing commendation. At many, many hospi- 
table boards in Berlin I have been present where 
no left breast was barren of a medal, and where 
the only medal won by participation in actual 
warfare, belonging to one of the guests, was 
safely packed away in his house. And as for the 
titles, there is no room in a small volume like 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 353 

this to enumerate them all; and the women folk 
all carry the titles of the husband, from Frau 
Ober-Postassistent, Frau Regierungs Assessor, 
up to the Chancellor's lady, who, by the way, 
wears a title in her mere face and bearing. Not 
long ago I saw in a provincial sheet the notice of 
the death of a woman of eighty, who was gravely 
dignified by her bereaved relatives with the title, 
and as the relict of, a veterinary. 

Upon a certain funicular at a mountain resort, 
where the cars pass one another up and down 
every twenty minutes, the conductors salute one 
another stiffly each time they pass. 

Of the army of people with titles of Ober- 
Regierungsrat, Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirk- 
licher Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Ge- 
heimer Ober-Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheim- 
erat, who also carries the additional title of 
"Excellenz" with his title; Referendar, Assessor, 
Justizrat, Geheimer Justizrat, Gerichts-Assessor, 
Amtsrichter, Amtsgerichtrat, Oberamtsrichter, 
Landgerichtsdirector, Amtsgerichtsprasident, Ge- 
heimer Finanzrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Ober 
Finanzrat, Legationsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer 
Legationsrat, Vice Konsul, Konsul, General 
Konsul, Commercienrat, Wirklichercommer- 
cienrat, Staatsanwalt, Staatsanwaltschaftsrat, 
Herr Erster Staatsanwalt, where the "Herr" is 



354 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

a legal part of the title; of those who must be 
addressed as "Excellenz," and in addition mili- 
tary and naval titles, and the horde of handles to 
names of those in the railway, postal, telegraph, 
street-cleaning, forestry, and other departments, 
one must merely throw up one's hands in despair, 
and bow to the inevitable disgrace of being quite 
unable to name this Noah's-ark procession of 
petty dignitaries. 

In the department of post and telegraph a 
new order has gone forth, issued during the last 
few months, by which, after passing certain ex- 
aminations, the employees may take the title of 
Ober-Postschaffner and Ober-Leitungsaufseher. 
After thirty years' service the postman is digni- 
fied with the title of Ober-Brieftrager. It is 
difficult to understand the type of mind which 
is flattered by such infantile honors. At any 
rate, it is a cheap system of rewards, and so long 
as men will work for such trumpery ends the 
state profits by playing upon their childish 
vanity. During the year 1912 more than 7,000 
decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 of 
these were of the three classes of the Order of 
the Red Eagle. On the twenty-fifth anniver- 
sary of the reign of the present Emperor, in 
1913, still another medal is to be struck, to be 
given to worthy ofl&cials and officers. 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 355 

All the professions and all the trades, too, have 
their pharmacopoeia of tags and titles, and you 
will go far afield to find a German woman who 
is not Frau Something-or-other Schmidt, or 
Fischer, or Miiller. Every day one hears women 
greeting one another as Frau Oberforstmeister, 
Frau Superintendent, Frau Medicinalrat, Frau 
Oberbergrat, Frau Apothekar, Frau Stadt-Mu- 
sikdirektor, Frau Doktor Rechtsanwalt, Frau 
Geschaftsfuhrer, and the like. All these titles, 
too, appear in the hotel registers and in all 
announcements in the newspapers. Even when 
a man dies, his title follows him to the grave, 
and even beyond it, in the speech of those 
left behind. 

These uniforms and titles and small formali- 
ties do make, I admit, for orderliness and rigid- 
ity, and perhaps for contentment; since every 
man and woman feels that though they are below 
some one else on the ladder they are above oth- 
ers; and every day and in every company their 
vanity is lightly tickled by hearing their impor- 
tance, small though it be, proclaimed by the 
mention of their titles. 

It pleases the foreigners to laugh and some- 
times to jeer at the universal sign of "Verboten" 
(Forbidden) seen all over Germany. They look 
upon it as the seal of an autocratic and bureau- 



356 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cratic government. It is nothing of the kind. 
The army, the bureaucracy, the autocratic 
Kaiser at the helm, and the landscape bestrewn 
with ''Verboten'' and " Nicht gestatteV' (Not al- 
lowed), these are necessities in the case of these 
people. They do not know instinctively, or by 
training or experience, wdiere to expectorate and 
where not to; where to smoke and where not to; 
what to put their feet on and what not to; where 
to walk and where not to; when to stare and 
when not to; when to be dignified and when to 
laugh; and, least of all, how to take a joke; how, 
when, or how much to eat, drink, or bathe, or 
how to dress properly or appropriately. The 
Emperor is almost the only man in Germany 
who knows what chaff is and when to use it. 

The more you know them, the longer you live 
among them, the less you laugh at " Verboten." 
The trouble is not that there are too many of 
these warnings, but that there are not enough! 
When you see in flaring letters in the street-cars, 
"In alighting the left hand on the left-hand rail,'* 
when you read on the bill of fare in the dining- 
car brief instructions underlined, as to how to 
pour out your wine so that you will not spill it 
on the table-cloth; when you see the list of from 
ten to fifteen rules for passengers in railway car- 
riages; when you see everywhere where crowds 



THE DTSTAFF SIDE .'557 

go and come, "Keep lo llie riglit"; wlion you 
see hanging on the raihngs of the canals that 
flow through Berhn a Hfe-buoy, and hanging over 
it full instructions with diagrams for the rescue 
of the drowning; when you see over a post-box, 
"Aufschrift und Marke niclit vergessen" (Do 
not forget to stamp and address your envelope) ; 
when you see in the church entrances a tray 
wilh water and sal volatile, and the countless 
other directions and remedies and preventives 
on every hand, you shrug your Saxon shoulders 
and smile pityingly, if you do not stand and stare 
and then laugh outright, as I was fool enough 
to do at first. But you soon recover from this 
superficial view of matters Teutonic. In one 
cab I rode in I was cautioned not to expectorate, 
not to put my feet on the cushions, not to tap 
on the glass with stick or umbrella, not to open 
the windows, but to ask the driver to do it, and 
not to open the door till the auto-taxi stopped; 
one hardly has time to learn the rules before the 
journey is over. 

In April, 1913, more laws are to come into 
effect for Ihe street traffic. People may not 
walk more than three abreast; they may not 
swiiiL;' llicif (';nu\s ;iii(l mill )r('ll;is as IIk'v walk; 
lliey may not drag llieir garments in Ilie slreel; 
lli('\- ina\' not sinu;, wliisllo, or lalk loudlx' in [\w 



358 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

street, nor congregate for conversation; there 
will follow, of course, a regulation as to the 
length of women's dresses to be worn in the 
street, and no doubt the police commissioner, an 
amiable bachelor, will decree that the shorter 
the better. All these fussy regulations are ridic- 
ulous to us, but in reality they are horrible and 
give one a feeling of suffocation when living in 
Germany. In the days when everybody rode a 
bicycle, each rider was obliged to pass an exami- 
nation in proficiency, paid a small tax, and was 
given a number and a license. Women who per- 
sisted in wearing dangerous hat-pins have been 
ejected from public vehicles. 

After April 1, 1913, no shop in Berlin can 
advertise or hold a bargain sale without permis- 
sion of the police. The changed prices must be 
aflSxed to the goods four days before the sale 
for inspection by the police, and only two such 
sales are permitted a year, and these must take 
place either before February 15, or between 
June 15 and August 1st. All particulars of the 
sale must be handed to the police a week in 
advance. In a carriage on the Bavarian rail- 
road, a husband who kissed and petted his tired 
wife was complained of by a fellow-passenger. 
The husband was tried, judged guilty, and fined. 
There was no question but that the woman was 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 359 

his wife; llius tlicrc is no loop-hole left for the 
legally euri(jiis, and thousands of male Germans 
hug and kiss one another on railway-station 
platforms who surely ought to be fined and im- 
prisoned or deported or hanged ! All this may 
be a rehc of Roman law. Cato dismissed Mari- 
lius from the Senate because he kissed his own 
wife by daylight in the presence of their own 
daughter. 

Shortly after leaving Germany, I returned 
from a few weeks' shooting in Scotland. We 
bundled out of the train onto the station plat- 
form in London. Dogs, gun-cases, cartridge- 
boxes, men and maid servants, trunks, bags, 
baskets, bunches of grouse, and the passengers 
seemed in a chaotic huddle of confusion. In 
Germany at least twenty policemen would have 
been needed to disentangle us. I was so torpid 
from having been long Teutonically cared for, 
that I looked on momentarily paralyzed. There 
was no shouting, not a harsh word that I heard; 
and as I was almost the last to get away, I can 
vouch for it that in ten minutes each had his 
own and was off. I had forgotten that such 
things could be done. I had been so long steeped 
in enforced orderliness, that I had forgotten that 
real orderliness is only born of individual self- 
control. I forgot that I was Ijack among the 



360 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

free spirits who govern a quarter of the habitable 
globe and whose descendants are making Amer- 
ica; and even if here and there one or more, 
and they are often recently arrived immigrants, 
are intoxicated by freedom and shoot or steal 
like drunken men; I realized that I am still an 
Occidental barbarian, thank God, preferring 
liberty, even though it is punctuated now and 
then with shots and screams and thefts, to 
official guardianship, even though I am thus 
saved the shooting, the screaming, and the 
thieving. 

In the nine years ending 1910, our Fourth of 
July celebrations cost America in killed, 18,000; 
in wounded, 35,000; but even that is better 
than the civic throttling of the German method. 
It seems to be forgotten that the men who keep 
the world fresh with their saline vigor, love 
risks as they love fresh air. They should be 
curbed, but not strangled! 

You read their history, you watch closely 
their manners, you prowl about among them, in 
their streets, their shops, their houses, their 
theatres; you accompany the crowds on a holi- 
day in the trains, in the forests, in the summer 
resorts, at their concerts or their picnics, in their 
beer-gardens and restaurants, and you soon see 
that the orderliness is all forced upon them from 



. THE DISTAFF SIDE 301 

withoul, and noL due Lo llicir own knowledge of 
how lo lake cure of themselves. 

In a recent volume by a distinguished German 
prison official he writes that, after a careful 
study of the figures from 1882 to 1010, he has 
discovered that one person now living in every 
twelve in Germany has been convicted of some of- 
fence. Doctor Finkelnburg shows that the num- 
ber of "criminals" in Germany is 3,809,000, of 
whom 3,000,000 are males, and 809,000 females. 
Every 43d boy and every 213th girl between the 
ages of twelve and eighteen has been punished 
by fine or imprisonment. This does not mean 
that the Germans are criminal or disorderly, but, 
on the contrary, it shows how absurdly petty 
are the violations of the law punished by fine 
or imprisonment. 

Their whole history, from Charlemagne down 
until the last fifty years, is a series of going to 
pieces the moment the strong hand of authority 
is taken away from them. The German, and 
especially the Prussian policeman, has become 
the greatest official busybody in the world. No 
German's house is his castle. The policeman 
enters at will and, backed by the authorities, 
questions the householder about his religion, his 
servants, the attendaiicr of his children at school, 
the status of the guests staying in his house, and 



362 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

about many other matters besides. If one of 
his children by reason of ill health is taught at 
home, the authorities demand the right to send 
an inspector every six months to examine him 
or her, to be sure that the child is properly 
taught. The policeman is in attendance on the 
platform at every public meeting, armed with 
authority to close the meeting if either speeches 
or discussion seem to him unpatriotic, unlawful, 
or strife-breeding. Professors, pastors, teachers 
are all muzzled by the state, and must preach and 
teach the state orthodoxy or go! A young pro- 
fessor of political economy in Berlin only lately 
was warned, and has become strangely silent since. 

The de-Germanizing of the German abroad is 
in line with this, and a constant source of annoy- 
ance to the powers that be. Buda-Pesth was 
founded by Germans in 1241, and now not one- 
tenth of the population is German. As the 
Franks became French, as the Long Beards be- 
came Italians, so the Germans become Americans 
in America, English in England, Austrian and 
Bohemian in Austria and Bohemia. It has been 
a problem to prevent their becoming Poles where 
the state has settled Germans for the distinct 
purpose of ousting the Poles. 

In China, in South America, and even in 
Sumatra I have heard German officials tell with 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 303 

indignation of liow their compatriots rapidly 
take the local color, and lose their German 
habits and customs and point of view. 

One of the half dozen best-known bankers in 
Berlin has lamented to me that he must change 
his people in South America every few years, as 
they soon go to pieces there. Army officers 
came home from China indignant to find their 
compatriots there speaking English and unwill- 
ing even to speak German. Even as long ago as 
the time of the Thirty Years' War a forgotten 
chronicler, Adam Junghaus von der Ohritz, 
writes: "Further, it is a misfortune to the Ger- 
mans that they take to imitating like monkeys 
and fools. As soon as they come among other 
soldiers, they must have Spanish or other out- 
landish clothes. If they could babble foreign lan- 
guages a little, they would associate themselves 
with Spaniards and Itahans." Wilhelm von 
Polentz, in his "das Land der Zukunft," writes: 
"die Deutsch-Amerikaner sind fUr die alte 
Ileimat dauernd verloren, politisch ganz und 
kulturell beinahe vollstiindig." 

Bismarck knew these people and the present 
Emperor knows these people, better than do 
you and I! Bismarck even insisted upon using 
the German text, and once returned a letter of 
conixratulation from an official bodv because it 



364 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

was written in the Latin text. Even the Great 
Elector must have recognized this weakness 
when he said: "Gedenke dass du bist ein Deut- 
scher!" The present Kaiser lends his whole 
social influence to keep the Germans German. 
He will have the bill of fare in German, he pre- 
fers the dreadful word Mundtuch to napkin. 
His officers very often demand that the bill of 
fare in a German hotel shall be presented to 
them in German and not in French. And they 
are quite right to do so, and quite right to hang 
the German world with the sign "Verboten''; 
quite right to distribute titles and medals and 
orders, for the more they are uniformed and deco- 
rated and ticketed and drilled, and taken care 
of, the better they like it, and the more contented 
these people are. Overorganization has brought 
this about. Their theories have hardened into 
a veritable imprisonment of the will. They have 
drifted away from Goethe's wise saying: "That 
man alone attains to life and freedom who daily 
has to conquer them anew." 

Let me refer again just here to the socialist 
propaganda, which seems to the outsider so 
strong here in Germany. Even this is far flab- 
bier than it looks, as I have attempted to explain 
elsewhere. In such strong and out-and-out in- 
dustrial centres as Essen, Duisburg-Muhlheim, 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 



3G.J 



Saarhriickcn, and Bochum, where a vigorous 
figlit has been made against sociahsm, (lie fol- 
lowing are the figures of the last eleetion in 1012 
when the soeialisls largely inereased their vote 
throughout other parts of Germany: 





NATIONALLIIIKUAL 


zi;ntium 


H(J( lAUJtMOKUAT 


Fvsscn 


25.937 
33.9.3-1 
25,108 
42.257 


42,832 
31,559 
24,228 
37,050 


40.503 

34.187 

4.157 

G4.833 


I )ui.sl)urg-MUliIhcim 

Saarl)riickcn 

nocliiiin 





I cite this example because it seems as though 
the growth of socialism in Germany were in 
direct contradiction to my argument that they 
are a soft, an impressionable, an amenable, and 
easily led and governed people. 

State socialism as thus far put into practice 
in Germany is, in a nutshell, the decision on the 
part of the state or the rulers that the individual 
is not competent to spend his own money, to 
choose his own calling, to use his own lime as he 
will, or to provide himself for his own future ami 
for the various emergencies of life. And by the 
iniiiiitc stale coiilrol, lliey are rapidly bringing 
the whole ])<)piilal idii lo an (Mifccblcd social and 
political coiulilion, where lliey can do iiolliing 
for themselves. 



366 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

They have been knocked about and dragooned 
by their own rulers and, be it said and empha- 
sized, they have received certain compensations 
and gained certain advantages, if nothing else 
an orderliness, safety, and care for the people by 
the state unequalled elsewhere in the world. 
But there is no gainsaying, on the other hand, 
that they have lost the fruits that are plucked 
by the nations of more individualistic training. 

They have clean streets, cheap music and 
drama, and a veritable mesh of national educa- 
tion with interstices so small that no one can 
escape, and they are coddled in every direction; 
but they have no stuff for colonizers, and they 
have been not infrequently wofully lacking in 
stalwart statesmen, and leaders. 

To deprive the worker of his choice of expendi- 
ture, by taking all but a pittance of it in taxation, 
is a dangerous deprivation of moral exercise. To 
be able to choose for oneself is a vitally neces- 
sary appliance in the moral gymnasium, even if 
here and there one chooses wrong. It is a curi- 
ous trend of thought of the day, which proposes 
to cure social evils always by weakening, rather 
than by strengthening the individual. 

Socialism is merely a moral form of putting a 
sharper bit in humanity's mouth; when of course 
the highest aim, the optimistic view, is to train 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 3(17 

people to <:^o as fast and straight and far as pos- 
sible, willi the least possible hampering of their 
natural powers by legislation. '*Some men are 
by nature free, others slaves," writes Aristotle, 
but whether this axiom can be accepted fully or 
not, it is undoubtedly true that you can first 
dragoon and then coddle a whole people, into a 
lack of independence and a shrinking from the 
responsibilities of freedom. 

We are drugging the people ourselves just now 
with legislation as a cure for the evils of indus- 
trialism, but such legislation will only do what 
soporifics can do, they numb the pain, but they 
never bring health. What a forlorn philosophy 
it is! Men take advantage, rob and steal, we 
say, and to do away with this we give up the 
fight for fair play and orderliness and propose 
sweeping away all the prizes of life, hoping thus 
to do away with the highwaymen of commerce 
and finance. If there is no booty, there will be 
no bandit, we say, forgetting altogether the cor- 
ollary' that if there are no prizes there will be no 
prizemen! Neither God nor Nature gives any- 
thing to those who do not struggle, and both God 
and Nature appoint the stern task-master, 
Necessity, to see to it that we do struggle. Now 
come the ignorant and I lie socialists, demanding 
l1ial tlie state step in and roll back the vcm'v laws 



368 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of creation by supplying what is not earned from 
the surplus of the strong. Who cannot see an- 
archy looming ahead of this programme, for it 
is surely a lunatic negation of all the laws of God 
and Nature? They do not seem to see either in 
America or in England that state supervision 
carried too far leads straight to the sanction of 
all the demands of socialism and syndicalism. 
Legislation was never intended to be the father 
of a people, but their policeman. Overlegisla- 
tion, whether by an autocrat or a democratic 
state, leads straight to revolution, to Csesarism, 
or to slavery. 

In Germany the state by giving much has 
gained an appalling control over the minute de- 
tails of human intercourse. I am no philosophic 
adviser to the rich; it is as the champion of the 
poor man that I detest socialism and all its works, 
for in the end it only leads backward to slavery. 
Every vote the workingman gives to a policy of 
wider state control is another link for the chains 
that are meant for his ankles, his wrists, and his 
neck. If the state is to take care of me when I 
am sick or old or unemployed, it must necessarily 
deprive me of my liberty when I am well and 
young and busy, and thus make my very health 
a kind of sickness. A year in Germany ought 
to cure any sensible workingman of the notion 



THE DISTAFF SIDE :iG9 

that the state is a better guardian of his purse 
and his powers than he is himself. A distin- 
guished G(M'nian pul)Heist, critieising this over- 
powering interferenee of the state, writes: "Mir 
ist wohl bewusst dass diese Gedanken einst weilen 
fromme Wunsche bleiben werden: die Schatten 
liihmender Mudigkeit die tiller unserer Politik 
higern, lassen wenig Iloffnung auf frohhehe Initi- 
ative. Allein inimer kann und wird es nieht so 
bleiben." And he ends with the ominous words: 
"Reform oder Revolution!" 

One often hears the apostles of a certain kit- 
tenish humanitarianism, talking of the great good 
that would result if we in America would provide 
light wines and beer and music, and parks and 
gardens, for our people. They see the crowds of 
men and women and children flocking by thou- 
sands to such resorts in Germany, where they 
eat tons of cakes and Brodchcns and jam, and 
where they drink gallons of beer and wine, and 
where they sit hour after hour apparently quite 
content. Wh}', Lord love you, ladies and gentle- 
men, our populace would never be content with 
such mild aiimsements! Fancy "Silver Dollar" 
Sulli\aii or *' Halh-house" John attempting to 
cajole their cohorts in such fashion! 

It may be a pity that our people are not thus 
easily amused, but, on the other hand, it means 



370 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

simply that our energy, our vitality, our national 
nervousness if you like, will not be so easily 
satisfied. Our disorderly nervousness, or ner- 
vous disorderliness, though it has been a tre- 
mendous asset in keeping us bounding along in- 
dustrially and commercially, and though it gives 
an exhilarating, champagne-like flavor to our 
atmosphere, has cost us dear. If you will have 
freedom, you will have those who are ruined by 
it; just as, if you will have social and political 
servitude, you will have a stodgy, unindependent 
populace. 

Only one out of sixty perpetrators of homi- 
cidal crime suffers the extreme penalty attach- 
ing to such crimes in America, and these figures, 
I admit, are a shocking revelation of supine jus- 
tice and sentimental executive, as when politics 
can even bend our President to grant silly par- 
dons, with baleful results upon the doings of 
other wealthy criminals. We use as large an 
amount of habit-forming drugs per capita as is 
used in the Chinese empire, so says Dr. Wright, 
who was commissioned by the State Department 
to gather facts on this subject. We import and 
consume 500,000 pounds of opium yearly, 
when 70,000 pounds, including its derivatives 
and preparations, should suffice for our medical 
needs. In the year 1910 no less than 185,000 







THE DISTAFF SIDE 371 

ounces of cocaine were imported, manufactured, 
and consumed, although 1.5,000 ounces would 
supply every legitimate need. America col- 
lected $31.0,000,000 from tariff taxes in 1911, 
and $40,000,000 of this from tobacco and 
alcoholics. 

My readers may look back to the title of this 
chapter and ask: What has all this to do with 
the status of women in Germany.'^ I have told 
you in these few pages the whole secret. The 
men are not independent; what can you expect 
of the women ! The men have, until very lately, 
had no surplus wealth or leisure, and have now, 
to all appearance, little surplus vitality or energy. 
Germany is getting to be a very tired-looking 
nation. One hears almost as little laughter in 
Germany as in India. Gayety and laughter are 
the bubbles and foam on the glass of life, proving 
that it is charged with energy. Do not believe 
me, although I have carefully watched many 
thousands of Germans in all parts of Germany 
taking their pleasure and their ease; come over 
and see for yourself! These thousands at their 
simple recreations are not gay. I grant the 
dangers we run by the opposite policy, but these 
are the results we have to fear from the German 
methods. 

It is the men who must supply tlic leisure, the 



372 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

independence, the setting, the background for 
the women. All Europe says that our women 
are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they 
treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not 
do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We 
can afford to let them say it! We have given 
our women an independence that many of them 
abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more 
than their share to spend, and more of luxury 
than is good for them; and all too many of the 
underbred among them paint and be jewel and 
begown themselves to imitate the lecherous bar- 
barism of the too free. But one of the greatest 
ladies in Germany tells me, *'I am never so flat- 
tered as when I am taken for an American!" I 
can pay her no handsomer compliment than to 
reply that she is worthy of the mistake. Our 
women revive the drooping dukedoms of Eng- 
land, and few will maintain that some of them 
at least are unsuited to the position. I have 
seen them in Germany as Frau Grafin this or 
that, and not only their appearance but their 
house-keeping machinery, running noiselessly 
and accurately, proves that there is something 
more than dollars behind them. 

One of the rare human beings whom I have 
known, who has at the same time the character- 
istics of the generous comrade, the good fellow. 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 157:5 

and the fine gentleman; wlio in moral courage 
in linu^ of l(>rril)le strain, oi' in physical courage 
when one's I)ack is to llic wall, never quailed, 
is an American woman; and thousands of my 
countrymen will say the same. 

You cannot produce this type without free- 
dom, without giving them opportunity, and 
taking the risks that are inherent in giving free 
scope to personal prowess. But they are not the 
women whom our blatant newspapers exploit, 
nor the women who buy the British aristocracy 
to launch them socially, nor the women who 
pervade the continental hotels and restaurants, 
nor the women whom as a rule the foreigner 
has the opportunity to meet. They are the 
women who have helped us to absorb the 
21,000,000 aliens who have entered America 
since the Civil War; the women wdio stood be- 
hind us when we fought out that war for four 
years, leaving a million men on the fields of 
battle; the women who in the realm of house- 
keeping, to come down to practical levels, have 
revolutionized these duties and turned a drud";erv 
into an art as have no other women in the world. 
The best answer llie American can make to the 
lixnrions lawlessness of some of our wonuMi, is lo 
point to the house-keeping and home-making of 
his compatriots, not only at homo l)ul riglit here 



374 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in Germany. Fifty years ago it could not have 
been said, but to-day there is no doubt in my 
mind that American house-keeping is the best 
in the world. In comfort, in the smooth run- 
ning of the household machinery, in good food 
and drink, perhaps in too lavish and too luxurious 
hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class 
by ourselves in matters of housewifery. 

The English attitude of women toward men is 
somewhat that of comradeship, and once mar- 
ried the man's comfort is looked after with some 
care; the American attitude of women toward 
men, in the more luxurious circles, is often, I 
admit, that of a spoiled child toward a gift- 
bringing uncle, and she permits him to worship 
her along the lines of a restricted rubric; but in 
Germany the subordination, the unquestioning 
and unthinking adulation, the blind acceptance 
of inferiority have not only softened the men 
but robbed the women of even sufficient inde- 
pendence to make them the helpmates that they 
try to be. There have been women of social and 
even political influence: Bettina von Arnim, 
Caroline Schlegel, Charlotte Stieglitz, Rahel 
Varnhagen, and lately Frau Lebin, who seems 
to have been a soothing adjunct of the Foreign 
Office. It is rather as admirers than as execu- 
tives that they shine. Their attitude toward the 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 375 

great Goethe, and his nonchakmt polygamy to- 
ward them, is difficult for us to understand and 
approve. 

" The gentle Henrietta then, 
And a tliird Mary next did reign. 
And Joan and Jane and Andria; 
And then a pretty Thomasine, 
And then another Kathcrine, 
And then a long et cetera." 

No real man is a misogynist, for not to like 
women is not to be a man. There are, how- 
ever, many men, both in Germany and out of it, 
who greatly dislike sham women; that is, women 
w^ho shirk their functional responsibilities. This 
form of dislike is a healthy instinct. Women 
are given the greatest and most inspiring of all 
tasks: to make men; and a woman who cannot 
make a man, by giving birth to one, or by de- 
veloping one as son or husband, has failed more 
deplorably even than a man who cannot make a 
living. This task of theirs constitutes a superi- 
ority imj^ossible to deny or to overcome. A 
woman, therefore, who craves man's activities 
and standards is as foolish as though a wheat - 
field should long to be a bakery. Most healthy- 
minded nuMi hold this view, though some of us 
may lliiiik lliat Ci(M-niaii men overemphasize it. 

The coarse sentiiiuMilaiilv of the lower classes 



376 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

lias been noted, but it is not confined to them. 
The premarital relations of all but the most cult- 
ured and experienced, are marked by a mawkish 
sweetness which is all the more noticeable in 
contrast with the dull routine of saving and 
slaving which follows. She begins by being 
photographed sitting in her hero's lap, and ends 
by sitting on the less comfortable chair to darn 
his socks and to tend his babies. There are 
women enthroned, and who deserve to be, in 
Germany as in other countries; but taken in the 
mass, speaking in hundreds of thousands, it is 
not an inaccurate picture to say that the women 
are not taken seriously in Germany except as 
mothers and servants. 

The census of 1910 shows that there are 
32,040,166 men in Germany and 32,885,827 
women, or 845,661 more women than men. 
The number of men in proportion to the number 
of women is steadily increasing in Germany, 
showing that the habits of the men are more and 
more feminine, that the state provides for them 
and protects them, and that the women take 
good care of them. 

In a virile state, where the men take risks, 
where they play hazardous games, where they 
travel and seek adventure, where they emigrate 
to seek new opportunities, the women will greatly 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 377 

outnumber the men. The excess of females in 
England and Wales in 1871 was 594,000; in 1881, 
001,000; in 1891, 890,000; in 1911, 1,178,000. 
The United Kingdom has the largest surplus of 
women of leisure in the world, and just now they 
are taking advantage of their numerical superior- 
ity in the most delightful and comical feminine 
fashion. They are proving their right to assist in 
coercing others to obey the laws, by disobeying 
the laws themselves. By pouring vitriol on golf- 
greens, by pinning their defiance to these di- 
shevelled greens with hair-pins, they propose to 
provoke the recalcitrant to recognition of their 
right to pin their names to seats in the House of 
Commons. It is all so sweetly feminine, that 
the stranger is astonished to hear such women 
dubbed unwomanly. Pray, what could be more 
womanly in England, than to pin a protest to a 
golf -green with a hair-pin! 

The German army, which is in itself a school of 
hygiene for the man, where the death-rate is the 
lowest of any army in Europe, and the many pro- 
visions for the slate care of the population, all go 
to coddle the men and protect them. The va- 
rious forms of labor insurance alone in Germany 
cost the state over $'250,000 a day, and if we in- 
clude the amount expended in compensation in 
all its forms, the yearly bill of the state for the care 
of its sick, injured and aged, amounts to nearly 



378 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

$170,000,000. No wonder that between the care 
of a grandmotherly state, and the attentions of 
a subservient womankind, the male population 
increases. I sometimes question whether there 
is not something of the hot-house culture about 
this male crop. Certainly consumption and 
other diseases are very wide-spread. A very 
detailed and careful investigation of certain 
forms of weakness is being made by our Rocke- 
feller Institute at this time, and if I am not mis- 
taken in the results of what these investigations 
have thus far disclosed, it will be found that 
Germany has her full share of rottenness to deal 
with. To those who care to corroborate these 
hints with facts I recommend the reading of 
certain recent numbers of the hygienic Rund- 
schaUf a German technical magazine of repute. 

There is a lack of vitality and elasticity, a 
stodgy, plodding way of working, much indul- 
gence in gregarious eating and drinking, and very 
mild forms of exercise and holiday-making, com- 
paratively httle sport, almost no game-playing 
where boys and men hustle one another about 
as in foot-ball and polo, and very long hours of 
application, from the school-boy to the ministers 
of state, all of which tend to and do produce a 
physical lack of alertness, vivacity, and audacity 
in the men of practically all classes. 

The way to see the people of a country is to 



TlIK DISTAFF SIDE 379 

stand by the hour in the large industrial towns 
and watch them as they go to and from their 
work; to watch them flocking in and out of 
railway stations, and at work in large numbers 
in the fields of Saxony, Silesia, and other parts 
of Prussia; to spend hours, and I admit that 
they are tedious hours, strolling through fac- 
tories, ship-yards, mines, and offices, paying no 
attention to the talk of your guide, but studying 
the faces and physique of the men and women. 
Having done this, an impartial observer is bound 
to remark that industrial and commercial Ger- 
many is taking a tremendous toll for the rapid 
progress she has made. It may be no worse 
here than elsewhere, but neither has the problem 
of a healthy, happy, toiling population been 
satisfactorily solved here, though perhaps better 
here than elsewhere. I have heard the women 
and girls in factories singing at their work, but 
the bird is no less caged because it sings. 

Men who ought to know better set an exam- 
ple of long hours of confinement at their work 
which is quite unnecessary. They tell you with 
pride that they arc at it from eight or nine in the 
morning till seven and often till later at night. 
That is somelliing that no sane man ought to 
be proud of. On investigation you find that in 
industrial and commercial circles, and in the 



380 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

oflSces of the state, men take two hours for 
luncheon and then return to work till nightfall. 
Two hours in the open air at the end of the day 
could be managed easily, but they do not want 
it. There is no vitality left for a game, for exer- 
cise, for a bath, and a change. 

They drug themselves with work, and slip 
away to the theatre, to a concert, to a Verein or 
circle, unwashed, ungroomed, and physically 
torpid, and the great mass of the population, 
high and low alike, outside the army officers, 
look it. 

The army officer's career is dependent upon 
his mental and physical vigor. The cylinder is 
quickly handed him and the helmet taken away 
if he grows too fat and too slow physically and 
mentally. There is no nepotism, no favoritism, 
and on reaching a certain rank he goes, if he falls 
below the standard required, and consequently 
he keeps himself fit. But a huge bureaucracy, 
with its stupid promotions by years and not by 
ability, with its government stroke, and its dan- 
gling pensions, positively breeds lassitude, lazi- 
ness, and dulness. You may see it on every hand 
in government offices, in the railway and postal 
services, where men are evidently kept on not 
for their fitness but by the tyranny of the sys- 
tem. High officials admit as much. 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 381 

111 Ihc liLllc state of Prussia the railways i)ay 
well and are well managed, but they are clogged 
to a certain extent by inefficient and unnecessary 
employees, and were the system spread over the 
United States the chaos in a dozen years would 
be almost irreparable, and even here the com- 
plaints are many and vigorous. Probably one 
male over twenty -five years of age out of every 
four is in government employ. This alone would 
account for the general air of lassitude which is 
one of the most noticeable features of German 
life. The Germans as a whole are beginning 
to look tired. It is a German, not an Italian or 
a Frenchman, the philosopher Nietzsche, who 
writes: "Seit es Menschen giebt, hat der 
Mensch sich zu wenig gefreut; das allein ist 
iinsere Erbsunde." 

There has been a great change in the status of 
women in the last twenty -five years. The ap- 
ophthegm of Pericles, or rather of Thucydides, 
"that woman is best who is least spoken of 
among men, either for good or evil," is not so 
rigidly enforced. Increased wealth througliout 
Germany has left the German woman more lei- 
sure from the drudgery of the home. She is not 
so wholly absorljcd by the duties of nurse, cook, 
and li()iis('-niai(l as slie once was. Hiil vvcu to- 
day her economies and lier ability to kcrp licr 



382 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

house with httle outside assistance are amazing. 
Some of the most dehghtful meals I have taken, 
have been in professional households, where small 
incomes made it necessary that wife and daugh- 
ters should do most of the work. 

The German professor has his faults, but in 
his own simple home, the work of the day behind 
him, his family about him at his well-filled but 
not luxurious board, with some member of the 
family not unlikely to be an accomplished musi- 
cian and with his own unrivalled store of learning 
at your service, when he raises his glass to you, 
filled with his best, with a smile and a hearty 
"Prosit," he is hard to beat as a host, to my 
thinking. Perhaps there is nothing like over- 
indulgence to make one crave simplicity, and 
no doubt this accounts for the fact that the 
really great ones of earth are satisfied and happy 
with enough, and abhor too much. 

They tell me that the Dienstmddchen is no 
longer what she used to be, but to my untutored 
eye her duties still seem to be as comprehensive 
as those of a Sioux squaw, and her performances 
unrivalled. As is to be expected, Germany is 
not blessed with trained servants. They are 
helpers rather than professional servants. In 
the scores of houses, public and private, where 
I have been a guest, only in one or two had the 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 383 

servants more than an alphabetical knowledge 
of what was due to one's clothes and shoes. 
The servants are rigidly protected by the state: 
they niiisl have so much time off, they cannot 
be dismissed without weeks of warning, and they 
themselves carry books with their moral and 
professional biographies therein, which are al- 
ways open to the inspection of the j^olice; and 
they must all be insured. 

In many towns, and cities too, there are hos- 
pitals and bands of nurses who for a small annual 
payment undertake to take over and care for a 
sick servant. If the doctor prescribes a "cure" 
for your servant, away she goes at the expense 
of the state to be taken care of. Wages are very 
small as compared with ours. Ten dollars a 
month for a cook, five for a house-maid, ten for 
a man-servant, forty to fifty for a chauffeur, and 
of course more in the larger and more luxurious 
establishments; though a chef who serves din- 
ners for forty and fifty in an official household I 
know is content with twenty dollars a month. 
A nursery governess can be had for twelve, and 
a well-educated English governess for twenty 
dollars a month. Even these wages are higher 
tlian ten years ago. To l)e more explicit, in a 
small household where three servants are kept 
the cook receives ."0 marks, the maid-servant '25 



384 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

marks, and the nursery governess 35 marks a 
month. In the household of an official of some 
means the man-servant receives 45 marks, the 
cook 30 marks, and the maid-servant 30 marks 
a month. When dinners or other entertainments 
are given, outside help is called in. In the house- 
hold of a rich industrial, whose family consists 
of himself, wife, and four children, the man- 
servant receives 80 marks, the chauffeur 200, 
the cook 45, the lady's maid 35, the house-maid 
25, kitchen-maid 12, and the governess 30 marks 
a month. 

I carry away with me delightful pictures of 
German households, big, little, and medium; and 
though it does not fit in nicely with my main 
argument, households whose mistresses were pat- 
terns of what a chatelaine should be. But I 
must leave that loop-hole for the critics, for I 
am trying only to tell the truth and to be fair, 
and not to be scientific or to bolster up a 
thesis. 

I can see the big castle, centuries old, with its 
rambling buildings winging away from it on 
every side, and in the court-yard its regal-looking 
mistress positively garlanded with her dozen 
children. There is no sign of the decadence of 
the aristocracy here. We sit down twenty or 
more every day at the family luncheon. Tutors 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 385 

jind governesses are at every I urn. A French 
abbe, as silken in manner and speech as his own 
soutane, bowls over all my prejudices of creed 
and custom, as I watch him rule with the lightest 
of hands and the softest of voices a brood of ter- 
magant small boys; to turn from this to a game 
of billiards, and from that to the Merry Widow 
waltz on the piano, that we may dance. An 
aide-de-camp trained in India and a French 
abbe, I am convinced that these are the apo- 
theosis of luxury in a large household. My 
Protestant brethren would, I am sure, throw 
their prejudices to the winds could they spend 
an evening with my friend. Monsieur I'Abbe! 
Nor Erasmus, nor Luther, nor Calvin would have 
had the heart to burn him. He is just as good 
a fellow as we are, knows far more, can turn his 
hand to anything from photography to the driv- 
ing of a stubborn pony, knows his world as few 
know it, and yet is inviolably not of it. I have 
chatted with Jesuit priests teaching our Western 
Indians; I have travelled with a preaching friar 
in Italy on his round of sermonizing; I have seen 
them in South America, in India, China, and 
Japan, and I recognize and acclaim their self- 
denying prowess, but no one of them was a more 
dangerous missionary than my last-named friend 
among them. Monsieur TAbbe! 



386 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

**For ever througli life the Cure goes 
With a smile on his kind old face — 
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair. 
And his green umbrella-case." 

There was a profusion at this castle, a hearti- 
ness of welcome, a patriarchal attitude toward 
the countless servants and satellites, an acreage 
of roaming space in the buildings, that smacked 
of the feudalism back to which both the castle 
and the family dated. How many Englishmen 
or Americans who sniff at German civilization 
ever see anything of the inside of German homes? 
Very few, I should judge, from the lame talk and 
writing on the subject. Let us go from this me- 
diaeval setting for modern comfort to a smaller 
establishment. Here a miniature Germania, 
with blue eyes and golden hair, presides, looking 
like a shaft of sunlight in front of you as she 
leads the way about the paths of her gloomy 
forest. In these, and in not a few other houses, 
there is little luxury, no waste, a certain Spartan 
air of training, but abundance of what is neces- 
sary and a cheery and frank welcome. 

I sometimes think the Germans themselves 
lose much by their rather overdeveloped ten- 
dency to meet not so often in one another's 
homes as in a neutral place: a restaurant, a 
garden, a Verein or circle, of which there is an in- 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 387 

terminable number. You certcainly get to know 
a man best and at his best in his own home, and 
you never get to know a wife and a mother out 
of that environment; for a woman is even more 
dependent than a man upon the sympathetic 
atmosphere that frames her. I should be, after 
my experience, and I am, the last person in the 
world to say that the Germans are not hospitable; 
but there is much less visiting even among them- 
selves, and much less of constant reception of 
strangers in their homes, than with us. Habit, 
lack of wealth, lack of trained servants, and a 
certain proud shyness, and in some cases indiffer- 
ence and a lack of vitalit}^ which welcomes the 
trouble of being host, account for this. No 
doubt, too, the old habit of economy remains 
even when there is no longer the same necessity:" 
for it, and saving and gayety do not go well 
together. In Gcldsachen hdrt die Gemiithlichkeit 
auf. 

I should be sorry to spoil my picture by the 
overemphasis of details. The reader will not see 
what I have intended to paint, if he gets only 
an impression of caution, of economy, of sordid- 
ness and fatigue. No nation that gives birth to 
ai; unlranslatal^lc word like GemUthlichkcit can 
br without that characteristic. The English 
words "home" and "comfort," the French word 



388 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

"esprit," and the German word Gemiithlichkeit 
have no exact equivalents in other languages. 
This in itself is a sure sign of a quality in the 
nation which bred the word. The difficulty lies 
in the fact that another language is another life. 
The Germans are not cheerful as we are cheer- 
ful; they are not happy as we are happy; they 
are not free as we are free; they are not polite 
as we are polite; they are not contented as we 
are contented ; and no one for a moment who is 
even an amateur observer and an amateur phi- 
lologist combined would claim that the three 
words, love and amour and Liebe mean the same 
thing. No word in the English language is used 
so often from the pulpit as the word love, but 
this cannot be said of the use of amour in France 
or of Liebe in Germany. Nations pour them- 
selves into the tiny moulds of words and give us 
statuettes of themselves. The Anglo-Saxon, the 
Latin, and the Teuton have filled these three 
words with a certain vague philosophy of them- 
selves, a hazy composite photograph of them- 
selves. No one writer or painter, no one incident, 
no one tragedy, no one day or year of history 
has done this. To us, love is the coldest, clean- 
est, as it is perhaps the most loyal of the three. 
L' amour sounds to us seductive, enticing, often 
indeed little more than lust embroidered to make 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 389 

a cloak for ennui. Liebe is to us friendly, soft, 
childlike. 

The nations of the earth, close as they are to- 
gether in these days, are worlds apart in thought. 
Each builds its life in words, and the words are 
as little alike as in the days of Babel; and thus 
it comes about that we misunderstand one an- 
other. We translate one another only into our 
own language, and understand one another as 
little as before, because we only know one an- 
other in translations, and the best of the life of 
each nation remains and always will remain un- 
translatable. No one has ever really translated 
the Greek lyrics or the choruses of iEschylus, or 
the incomparable songs of Heine. Who could 
dream of putting the best of Robert Louis 
Stevenson into German, or Kiphng's rollicking 
ballads of soldier life into Spanish, or Walter 
Pater into Dutch, or Edgar Allan Poe into Rus- 
sian! The one language common to us all, 
music, tells as many tales as there are men to 
hear. Each melody melts into the blackness or 
the brightness of the listener's soul and becomes 
a thousand melodies instead of one. What does 
the moaning monotony of a Korean love-song 
mean to the westerner, or what does the Swan 
song mean to the Korean? Only God knows. 
We can never translate one nation into the Ian- 



390 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

guage of another; our best is only an interpreta- 
tion, and we must always meet the criticism that 
we have failed with the reply that we had never 
hoped to succeed. We are forever explaining 
ourselves even in our own small circles; how can 
we dare to suggest even, that we have made one 
people to speak clearly in the language of an- 
other? The best we can do is to give a kindly, 
a good-humored, and, at all times and above all 
things, a charitable interpretation. Informa- 
tion, facts, are merely the raw material of cult- 
ure; sympathy is its subtlest essence. 

There is a world of good humor, of cheerful- 
ness, of contentment, of domestic peace and 
happiness in Germany. There are courtesy, 
politeness, even grand manners here and there. 
But these words mean one thing to them, another 
thing to us, and it is that I am striving, feebly 
enough to be sure, to make clear. May I beg 
the reader and the student to follow me with 
this point clearly in mind? While I am out- 
lining with these painful details that their ways 
are not as our ways, I am not denouncing their 
ways, but merely offering matter for considera- 
tion and comparison. 

A nation is most often punished for its faults 
by the exaggeration of its qualities, and if, as it 
seems to me, Germany suffers like the rest of 



THE DISTAFF SIDE S9l 

us in this respect, it is none of my doing. It 
will be my failure and the reader's failure, if we 
do not profit by watching these qualities in 
ourselves, and in others festering into faults. 
Woman's position and ambitions, the home, the 
amusements, and the satisfactions of life, are 
very different in Germany from ours. I note 
these as facts, not as inferiorities. I note, too, 
that in Germany, as elsewhere, Hegel was pro- 
foundly right in his dictum, that everything car- 
ried to its extreme becomes its contrary. Too 
much caution may become a positive menace to 
safety; too much orderliness may result in in- 
dividual incapacity for seK-control; just as 
liberty rots into license, and demos descends to 
a crown and sceptre and tyranny. I am merely 
calling attention to this great law of national 
development, that the exaggeration of even fine 
qualities is the road to the punishment of our 
faults, in Germany, as in every other nation under 
the sun. 

It is only when you have had a peep into a 
small farmer's house in Saxony, into the artisans* 
houses in the busy Rhine and Westphalia coun- 
try; spent a night in a peasant's house and 
stable, for they are under the same roof, in the 
mountains of the South ; and visited the greater 
establishments of the large land-holder and the 



392 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

less pretentious houses of the gentleman farmer, 
and the country houses, big and little, in all parts 
of Germany, that you get anything of the real 
flavor of Germany. 

If, as Burke says, it is impossible to indict a 
whole nation, it is even more difficult to fit a 
people with a few discriminating and really en- 
lightening adjectives. One word I dare to apply 
to them all, though I know well how differ- 
ent they are in the north and south and east 
and west, as diversified indeed as any nation in 
the world, and that is the word patient. They 
can stand longer, sit longer, eat longer, drink 
longer, work longer hours, and dream longer, and 
dawdle longer than any people except the Ori- 
entals. This custom may date back to far dis- 
tant times. Sitting, in the Greek view, was a 
posture of supplication (Odyssey, XIV, 29-31). 
The Emperor himself sets the example. He is 
an indefatigable stander, if I may coin the word, 
and on horseback he can apparently spend the 
day and night without inconvenience. Their pa- 
tient quarry work in archaeology and in com- 
parative philology laid the foundations for the 
new history -writing of Heeren and Mommsen; 
and their scholarship to-day is still of the digging 
kind. They seldom produce a Jebb, a Jowett, 
a Verrall, and never that type of scholar, wit 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 393 

and poet combined, a Lowell or an Arthur Hugh 
Clough. Indeed, with a suspicious self-con- 
sciousness the German professional mind inclines 
to be contemptuous of any learning that is not 
unpalatably dry. What men can read with en- 
joyment cannot be learning, they maintain. 

I have visited half a dozen hospitals, and on 
one or two occasions been present at an operation 
by a famous surgeon. It is evident from the bear- 
ing of patients, nurses, and students that they 
are dealing with a less highly strung population 
than ours. Indeed, the surgeons who know both 
countries tell me that here in Germany they 
have more endurance of this phlegmatic kind. 
They suffer more like animals. Their patience 
reaches down to the very roots of their being. 

On that delightful big fountain, in that para- 
dise of fountains, Nuremberg, the statues of the 
electors and citizens picture men who were un- 
troubled and cheerful, slow-moving, contented, 
patient; while the little figures on the guns are 
positively jolly. The only mournful figure on 
the whole fountain is a man with a book on his 
knees teaching a child. He is pallid, even in 
bronze, and his face is lined as he muses over the 
problem that has stumped the wisest of us : how 
to make a man by stuffing a child with books! 
It cannot be done, but we follow this will-o'-the- 



394 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

wisp through the swamps of experience with the 
pitiable enthusiasm of despair. 

Only liberty can make a man, and she is such 
a costly mistress that with our increasing hordes 
of candidates for independence we cannot afford 
her; so we go on fooling the people with mechan- 
ical education. But even this figure is patient! 

The Germans are patient even with their 
food. What would become of them without the 
goose, the pig, the calf, and the duck, that 
meagre alimentary quartette? The country is 
white with home-raised geese, and yet they im- 
ported 8,337,708 in 1910, and 7,236,581 in 1911. 

One of their most charming bits of classic art 
is the famous miniature statue of the Gooseman; 
and the real name of the great Gutenberg, who, 
by his invention of printing, did more than any 
other mortal to make it easy for the human race 
to acquire the anserine mental habits, and the 
anserine moral characteristics, was Gansfleisch! 

The goose is really the national bird of the 
German people. You eat tons of goose, and 
then you sleep beneath the feathers. The goose 
first nourishes you and then protects your diges- 
tion. The extraordinary make-up of the German 
bed must be laid to the door of the guilty goose. 
The pillows are so soft that your head is ever 
sinking, never at rest. Instead of easily applied 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 395 

blankets, that you can adapt to the temperature, 
you are given a great cloud of feathers, sewn in 
a balloon-like bag, which floats upon you accord- 
ing to your degree of restlessness, and leaves you 
for the floor, when in stupid sleepiness you en- 
deavor to protect your whole person at once 
with its flimsy and wanton formlessness. As a 
rule the bed is built up at the head so that you 
are continually sliding down, down under the 
goose feathers, your nose and mouth are soon 
covered, and who can breathe with his toes ! 

They accumulate comfort very slowly. The 
wages are small and the satisfactions are small. 
On the street-cars the conductor is grateful for 
a tip of five pfennigs, and his daily customers 
are handed from the car-steps and respectfully 
saluted in return for this tiny douceur. When 
you dine or lunch at a friend's house you are ex- 
pected to leave something in the expectant palm 
of his servant who sees you out. 

Women carry small parcels of food to the 
theatre, to the tea and beer gardens, and thus 
save the small additional expense. Many a 
time have I seen these thrifty housewives pocket 
the sugar and the zwiebacks and Brodchen left 
over. In the hotels, soap, paper, and common 
conveniences of the kind are taken, so I am told, 
not, I maintain, as a theft, but as an economy. 



396 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

We are in the habit of carrying our small change 
loose in a trousers pocket, but the German al- 
most without exception carries even his ten and 
five pfennig pieces carefully in a purse. Outside 
many of the big shops is placed a row of niches 
where you may leave your unfinished cigar till 
you return. The economy thus illustrated shows 
a certain disregard, of a not altogether agreeable 
chance of interchangeability, that might even be 
dangerous to health. On the other hand, it is 
a wise precaution that marks beer-glasses and 
beer-jugs with a line, to show just how much 
beer you are entitled to. This puts the foam- 
stealing vendor at your mercy. 

The entertainments, dinners, luncheons, teas, 
except among the small cosmopolitan companies 
who do not count as examples of German man- 
ners and customs, are very prolonged affairs. 
There is much standing about. At ten o'clock, 
having dined at half -past seven, beer, tea, coffee, 
sandwiches are brought in, and you begin the 
gastronomies over again on a smaller scale. 
There is no occasion when eating and drinking 
are not part of the programme. If you go to 
the play or the opera you may eat and drink 
there ; if you go for a walk the goal is not a bath 
and a rub-down, but beer or chocolate and cakes. 

I am not sure that there is not something in 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 397 

the theory that their soil has less iron in it, being 
so intensively cultivated, and that our food is 
consequently stronger than theirs; at all events, 
they eat more frequently and more copiously 
than we do. It seems to me that both the men 
and the women show it in their faces and figures. 
They are a heavy, puffy, tumbling lot after forty; 
and with my prepossessions on the subject I am 
inclined to put it down to irregular eating, to too 
much eating of soft and sweet food, too much 
drinking of fattening beverages, and much, much 
too little regular exercise, and to the fact that 
they are still infants in the matter of personal 
hygiene. Dressing-gowns, slippers, proper care 
of the teeth and hair, regular ablutions, changing 
of clothes, all these dozens of helps to health are 
patiently neglected. It is just as troublesome to 
take care of yourself, to groom your person, to 
be regular in your habits, and restrained and 
careful in your diet as to take proper care of a 
horse or a dog. It shows a rather high grade of 
persistent prowess in a man just to keep himself 
fit, to keep himself in working or playing health. 
Without the drilling they receive in the army in 
these matters, one wonders where this popula- 
tion would be. 

The doggedness, the patience of the German 
is notable, but the alertness, vivacity, the energy 



398 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

easily on tap, these are lacking both among the 
men and the women, and, as it seems to me, for 
these easily apparent reasons. There are more 
rest-cures, rheumatism, heart, liver, kidney, 
anaemic cures in Germany, and to suit all purses, 
than in all Anglo-Saxondom combined, even if 
subject territories are included. In Saxony 
alone, which is not renowned for its cures, the 
number of visitors at Augustus Bad, Bad Elester, 
Hermanns Bad, Schandau, and some seven others 
has increased from 13,000 ten years ago to 
30,000 in 1910. 

Between 1900 and 1909, while the population 
of Germany increased 15 per cent., the days of 
sickness in the insurance funds increased 59 per 
cent, and the expenditure 95 per cent. Some 
alterations were made in the law between those 
years permitting a certain extension of the days 
of sickness, but an accurate percentage may be 
taken between the years 1905 and 1909. Dur- 
ing those years the population increased by 7 
per cent., the days of sickness by 17 per cent., 
and the expenditure out of the sick-funds by 32 
per cent. The total cost of sickness insurance 
in 1900 was $42,895,000 and in 1909 $83,640,000. 
What will happen in Great Britain when sickness 
insurance comes into thorough working order is 
worthy of caricature. The way my Irish friends 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 399 

will play that game fills me with joy. It is an 
abominable harness to put on the Anglo-Saxon, 
and he has my very best wishes if he refuses to 
wear it tamely. It is only another piece of tired 
legislation that solves nothing. Even Germany 
would be a thousand times better off without it. 
This attempting to make pills and powders take 
the place of love one another, is merely the 
politician sneaking away from his problem. Of 
course, it is impossible to tell how many people 
are sick by being paid for it, probably not a small 
number. We all have mornings when we would 
turn over and stick to our pillows if we were sure 
of payment for doing so. The German appar- 
ently is the only person in the world who is happy, 
cegrescit medendo. The Germans keep going, we 
must all admit that, but at a slower pace, with 
less energy to spare, and with far less robust love 
of life. 

If the men are patient, the women must be 
more so, and they are. The marriage service 
still reads: "He shall be your ruler, and you 
shall be his vassal." The women are not only 
patient with all that requires patience of the 
men, but they are patient with the men besides, 
a heavy additional burden from the American 
point of view. Beethoven writes: "Resigna- 
tion! Welch' elendes Hiilfsmittel! Und doch 



400 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

bleibt es mir das einzige iibrige." They take 
resignation for granted as we never do. 

Some ten years ago only, was formed the 
Women's Suffrage League in Germany. It was 
necessary to organize in the free city of Hamburg, 
because women were not allowed either to form 
or to join political unions in Prussia! It is only 
within a very few years that the girls' higher 
schools have been increased and cared for in due 
proportion to the schools provided for the higher 
education of the boys. The first girls' rowing 
club was organized at Cassel in 1911. Even now 
as I write there are protests and petitions from 
the male masters against women teachers in the 
higher positions of even these schools. In the 
discussions as to the proper subjects to be taught 
to the girls, who in 1912 began attending the 
newly constituted continuation schools for girls 
in Berlin, there is a strong party who argue that 
all of them should be taught only house-keeping 
and the duties pertaining thereto. To the great 
majority of German men, children and the 
kitchen are and ought to be the sole preoccupa- 
tions of women, with occasional church attend- 
ance thrown in. 

There have been enormous changes in the 
place women hold in the German world in the 
last thirty years. The Red Cross organization 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 401 

of the women throughout Germany is admirable 
and as complete and efficient as the army that it 
is intended to help; one can hardly say more. 
There are many private charities in Berlin and 
other cities, managed entirely by women, and 
doing excellent and sensible work; such as the 
kindergartens, the Pestalozzi-Froebelhaus for ex- 
ample, where four hundred children are taken 
care of daily and fifteen thousand ten-pfennig 
meals provided, besides classes for the young 
women students under the supervision of the 
Berliner Verein flir Volkserziehung, with courses 
in the elements of law and politics and other 
matters likely to concern them in their activities 
as teachers, nurses, or charity helpers; the in- 
valid-kitchens; the societies for looking after 
young girls; the work in the Temperance League; 
the Lette-Verein, one of the most sane and sen- 
sible institutions in the world for the training of 
girls and young women, where they turn out 
some two thousand girls a year trained in house- 
wifely economy ; the wonderful and pitiful colony 
at Bielefeld, founded by one of Germany's great- 
est organizers and saints, Pastor Bodelschwing, 
and now carried on by his equally able son, and 
aided largely by the sympathy and resources of 
women. Only another Saint Francis could have 
imagined, and produced, and loved into useful- 
ness such an institution. 



402 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The summer colonies, called gartenlauben col- 
onies, where the outlying and unused land on the 
outskirts of the cities is divided up into small 
parcels and rented for a nominal sum to the 
poorer working people of the city, constitute a 
most sensible form of philanthropy. You see 
them, each named by its proprietor, with a flag 
flying, with the light barriers dividing them, and 
with the small huts erected as a shelter, where 
flowers and fruits and vegetables are grown, 
often adding no small amount to income, and 
in every case offering the soundest kind of work 
and recreation. These colonies were started by 
a woman in France, and the idea worked its 
way through Belgium to Germany, and they are 
now supported and helped by the direct inter- 
est of the Empress. The woman who put this 
scheme into operation ought to have a monu- 
ment ! At Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, on 
a plot lent by the city, there are thirteen of these 
colonies divided into over a thousand plots. 

There are three-quarters of a million women 
in Germany who are independent owners and 
heads of establishments of different kinds, and 
some ten million who are bread-winners. Of the 
increase in the number of women students I have 
written in another chapter, and of their increas- 
ing participation in the political, economical, 
hterary, and scholarly life of the nation there 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 403 

are many examples. Once or twice I have even 
heard them speak in pubHc, and speak well, 
while if my memory serves me, this was prac- 
tically unknown in my university days here. 
The problem of domestic apprenticeship is also 
being worked out by the women of Germany. 
In Munich, in Frankfurt-am-Main and elsewhere 
this most difficult and dehcate question is being 
partially answered at least. Girls are appren- 
ticed to families needing them, under the super- 
vision of a committee of women. The girls and 
their families agree to certain terms, and the 
families agree also to teach them household 
duties, give them proper food, eight hours' sleep, 
their Sunday out, and so on. The German 
women's societies who have thus boldly tackled 
this problem are plucky indeed, and prove easily 
enough that there is a large and growing body 
of women in Germany, who have minds and wills 
of their own and great executive ability. 

Let me suggest to some of our idle women that 
they pay a visit to the Hausf rauenbund at Frank- 
fort and the Frauenverein-Arbeitererinnenheim 
at Munich, before they pass judgment upon this 
chapter. For I should be sorry to leave the im- 
pression that all the women of Germany are list- 
less, oppressed, and without any feeling of civic 
responsibility. 

All these things have been accomplished by 



404 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

women in Germany with far less sympathy from 
the men than they receive in America or in Eng- 
land. Cato wrote of women's suffrage: "Pray 
what will they not assail, if they carry their 
point? Call to mind all the principles govern- 
ing them by which your ancestors have held the 
presumption of women in check, and made them 
subject to their husbands. ... As soon as they 
have begun to be your equals they will be your 
superiors." It is an older story than the un- 
read realize, this of the rights of women. The 
bulk of Germany's male population still hold to 
Cato's view. It is not so much that they are 
antagonistic, except in the case of the teachers, 
where the women have become active compet- 
itors; they are in their patient way impervious. 
Nor can it be said that any very large number of 
the women themselves are eager for more rights; 
rather are they becoming restless because they 
receive so little consideration. 

Their pleasures are simple and restricted, reg- 
ular attendance at the theatre, at concerts, an 
occasional dinner at a restaurant to celebrate an 
anniversary, excursions with the whole family 
to a beer restaurant of a Sunday, and the endless 
meeting together for reading, sewing, and gossip 
— no German woman apparently but what be- 
longs to a verein or circle, meeting, say, once a 
week. 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 405 

The women and the men are gregarious. Vw 
soli is the motto of the race. They love to take 
their pleasures in crowds, and I am not sure that 
this does not dull the enthusiasm for personal 
rights and gratifications, and for individual su- 
premacy and dignity. It is rare to find a Ger- 
man who would subscribe to Andrew Mar veil's 
misogynist lines: 

"Two paradises are in one 
To live in Paradise alone." 

It is typical of this love of being together that 
an independent member of the Reichstag, owing 
allegiance to no party, is called a Wilde, and this 
same word Wilde, or wild man, is applied to the 
student at the university who belongs to no 
corps or association of students. This love of 
being together, of touching elbows on all occa- 
sions, makes them more easily led and ruled. 
They hate the isolation necessary for indepen- 
dence and revolt. 

Of the relations between men and women I 
long ago came to the conclusion that this is a 
subject best left to the scientific explorer. It is, 
however, open to the casual observer to comment 
ux>on the monstrous percentage of illegitimacy 
in Berlin, 20 per cent, or one child out of 
every five, born out of wedlock; 14 per cent, 
in Bavaria; and 10 per cent, for the whole em- 



406 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

pire. This alone tells a sad tale of the atti- 
tude of the men and women toward one another. 
There is a long journey ahead of the women who 
propose to lift their sisters on to a plane above 
the animals in this respect. In the matter of 
divorce Prussia comes fourth in the hst of Euro- 
pean nations. Norway, with the cheapest and 
easiest, and at the same time the wisest, divorce 
law in the world, has almost the lowest percent- 
age of divorce. In 1910 there were 390 divorces 
out of 400,000 existing marriages, of which 
14,600 had taken place that year. The per- 
centage is thus only about ^)4 per year. The 
total per 100,000 of the population in Switzer- 
land is 43; in France 33; in Denmark 27; and 
in Prussia 21. In industrial Saxony there are 32 
and in Catholic Bavaria 13. The number of 
married people in Germany according to the 
last census shows an increase, the number of 
bachelors and widowed persons a decrease. 
Since 1871 the number of married persons 
has increased by 2 per cent. The birth rate 
shows a proportional decline. The problem that 
bothers all social economists is to the fore in 
Germany as elsewhere, for the people between 
sixty and seventy years of age number 14.65 per 
cent, of the population, while the young people 
under ten number only 11.12, and those between 
twenty and thirty 10.93 per cent. The birth 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 407 

rate therefore shows the same tendency as in 
France, England, and America. A recent in- 
vestigation on a small scale seems to show that 
bureaucracy has a certain influence here. Of 
300 officials questioned, only 10, or 3^ per thou- 
sand, had more than two children. It is not an 
impossible, but certainly a laughable, outcome 
of state interference carried too far, should it 
result in the state's becoming an incubator for 
the unfit, in a country where the pensions for 
officers and employees of the state have risen 
from 50,000,000 marks in 1900 to 111,000,000 
marks in 1911. 

Even in higher circles in Germany there is a 
gushing idealism about the relations of the sexes. 
In their songs and sayings, as well as in their 
mythology, there is a laudation of love that is 
overstimulating. The lines of that inconsequen- 
tial philosopher, that irresponsible moralist, that 
dreamy Puritan, Emerson, 

"Give all to love; 
Obey thy heart; 
Friends, kindred, days, 
Estate, good fame. 
Plans, credit and the Muse — 
Nothing refuse" 

would be warmly praised in Germany. 



408 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

"I could not love thee, dear, so much 
Loved I not honour more" 



are lines more to our taste. Even love should 
have a deal of toughness of fibre in it to be 
worth much. 

I must leave it to my readers to guess what I 
think of the German woman; indeed, it is of 
little consequence what any individual opinion 
is, if matter is given for the formation of an 
opinion by others. Truth cannot afford to be 
either gallant or merciless. There are w^omen 
in Germany whom no man can know without 
respect, without admiration, without affection. 
There are the blue eyes, sunny hair, peach-bloom 
complexions of the north; there are the dark- 
eyed, black-haired, heavy -browed women of the 
Black Forest; there is often a Quakerish elegance 
of figure and apparel to be seen on the streets of 
the cities, and from time to time one sees a real 
Germania, big of frame, bold of brow, fearless of 
glance — patet deaf 

But we can none of us be quite sure of the 
impartiality of our taste in such matters. Our 
baby fingers and our baby lips were taught to 
love a certain type of beauty. Our mothers 
wove a web of admiration and devotion from 
which no real man ever escapes; our maturer 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 409 

passions lashed themselves to an image from 
which we can never wholly break away; our 
sins and sorrows and adventures have been 
drenched in the tears of eyes that are like no 
other eyes; and consequently the man who 
could pretend to cold neutrality would be a 
reprobate. 

The German looks to Germany, the English- 
man to England, the Frenchman to France, as 
do you and I to America, for 

*'The face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium." 



VIII 

"OHNE ARMEE KEIN DEUTSCHLAND" 

OF every one hundred inhabitants of Ger- 
many, including men, women, and chil- 
dren, one is a soldier. There are, 
roughly, 65,000,000 inhabitants and 650,000 
soldiers. 

The American army is about equal in num- 
bers to the corps of officers of Germany's army 
and navy. To the American, as to almost every 
other foreigner, the German army means only 
one thing: war. We all hear one thing: 

"And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
Ancestral voices prophesying war." 

I believe this is a half-truth, and dangerous ac- 
cordingly. This army has been in existence for 
over forty years, and has done far more to keep 
the peace than any other one factor in Europe, 
except, perhaps, the British navy. 

The German army protects the German peo- 
ple not only from external foes, but from internal 
diseases. It is the greatest school of hygiene in 

the world, on account of its sound teaching, the 

410 



THE GERMAN ARMY 411 

devotion, skill, and industry of its officers, the 
number of its pupils, and its widely distributed 
lessons and influence. 

Culture taken by itself is livery business, and 
when combined with much beer and wine drink- 
ing, irregular eating and a disinclination for reg- 
ular exercise, culture becomes a positive menace 
to health. Of this danger to the German, their 
own great man Bismarck spoke in the Abgeord- 
netenhaus in 1881: "Bei uns Deutschen wird 
mit wenigem so viel Zeit totgeschlagen wie mit 
Biertrinken. Wer beim Friihschoppen sitzt oder 
beim Abendschoppen und gar noch dazu raucht 
und Zeitungen liest, halt sich voU ausreichend 
beschaftigt und geht mit gutem Gewissen nach 
Haus in dem Bewusstsein, das Seinige geleistet 
zu haben." 

("The Germans waste more time drinking beer 
than in any other way. The man who sits with 
his morning or his afternoon glass of beer beside 
him, and who, in addition, smokes and reads the 
newspapers, considers that he is much occupied, 
and goes home with a good conscience, feeling 
that he has fully done his duty.") 

" Jeden Feind besiegt der Deutsche: 
Nur den Durst besiegt er nicht." 

Which I permit myself to translate into these 
two lines: 



412 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

"The German conquers every foe, 
Except his thirst, that lays him low." 

Even if the German army were not necessary 
as a policeman, it could not be spared as a phy- 
sician by the German people. It is to be for- 
ever kept in mind that the German is brought 
up on rules; the American and the Englishman 
on emergencies. Emergencies provide a certain 
discipline of themselves, and our philosophy of 
civilization leaves it to the individual to get his 
own discipline from his own emergencies. We 
call it the formation of character. The German 
thinks this method a hap-hazard method, and 
burdens men with rules, and the army is Ger- 
many's greatest school-master along those lines. 
We are inclined to think that it results in a 
machine-made citizen. 

There are three classes of men who pick up the 
bill of fare of life and look it over : Civilization's 
paralyzed ones, with no appetite, who can choose 
what they will without regard to the prices; the 
cautious, those with appetite but who are ham- 
pered in their choice by the prices; the bold, 
those with appetite and audacity, who rely upon 
their courage to satisfy the landlord. The Ger- 
mans are only just beginning to look over the 
world's bill of fare in this last lordly fashion, 
to which some of us have long been accustomed. 



THE GERMAN ARMY 413 

I see no reason why they should not do so, 
though I see clearly enough the suspicion and 
jealousy it creates. 

They have been swathed in "Forbidden" so 
long that their taste for daring was late in com- 
ing. Our colonies, small wars, punitive expedi- 
tions, and control over neighboring territories 
are not planned for far ahead; but the exigencies 
of the situations are met by the remedies and so- 
lutions of men fitted by their training in school, 
in sport, in social and political life for just such 
work, and who are the more efficient the more 
they do of it. We are inclined to do things, and 
to think them out the day after; while the Ger- 
man thinks them out the week before, and then 
sometimes hesitates to do them at all. 

The German goes more slowly, perhaps more 
successfully, in commercial and industrial under- 
takings, but always with a chart in front of him, 
a pair of spectacles on his nose, and with no de- 
sire to take chances. 

In the rough-and-tumble world, the American 
and the Englishman went ahead the faster; in a 
more orderly world, and commerce, industry, 
and war are all far more scientific or orderly than 
of yore, the German has come into his own and 
goes ahead very fast. He has not made friends 
and supporters as have the other two: first, be- 
cause he is a new-comer; and also, I believe, 



414 ;GERMANY and the GERMANS 

because human nature, even when it is not ad- 
venturous itself, loves adventure, and has a lik- 
ing for the man who is a law unto himself. In- 
deed, the Germans themselves have a sneaking 
fondness for such a one. At any rate there is 
far more imitation of American and English ways 
in Germany, than of German manners, customs, 
and methods in America or in England. 

"Experiment is not sufficient," writes The- 
ophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus; 
"experience must verify what can be accepted or 
not accepted; knowledge is experience." For 
the moment, but it is probably not for long, we 
have the advantage in the knowledge bred of 
experience. 

The German comes from the forest, loves the 
forest. " Kein Volk ist so innig mit seinem Wald 
erwachsen wie das Deutsche, keines liebt den 
Wald so sehr." ("No nation has grown up so 
at one with its forests as have the Germans; no 
other nation loves its forests as do they.") He 
walks, and meditates, and sings in the forest, and 
nowadays goes to the forest with his skis, his 
snow-shoes, and his sled. Our great games are, 
many of them, personal conflicts, and attended 
by some personal risk, and demanding both dis- 
cipline in preparing for them and severe disci- 
pline in the playing. Our love of the aleatory, of 
betting our belongings, our powers, our per- 



THE GERMAN ARMY 415 

sons even, against life/is not commonly alive in 
Germany. The Germans are only just emerging 
into safety and confidence in themselves, and 
beginning cautiously to agree with us that 

"He either fears his fate too much. 
Or his deserts are small, 
That dares not put it to the touch 
To gain or lose it all." 

From these sombre forests came a race who still 
find it lonely to be alone, and they herd to- 
gether still for safety as of old, and have no 
love of physical speculation. They are daring 
in thought and theory, but cautious in physical 
and personal matters. An office stool followed 
by a pension contents all too many men in 
Germany. 

"Reden, Handeln, Tun und Wandeln 
Zeigt der Menschen Wesen nicht. 
Was im Herzen sie im Stillen 
Fest verschliessen, stumm verhiillen, 
1st ihr richtigs Angesicht." 

An overwhelming majority of Germans believe 
that this is man's real portrait; an overwhelm- 
ing majority of Americans would not even un- 
derstand it. 

The German army is the antidote to this lack 
of physical discipline, this lack of strenuous phys- 
ical life. The army takes the place of our West, 
of our games, of our sports; just as it takes the 



416 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

place of England's colonies and public schools 
and games and sports. When looked at in this 
way, when its double duty is recognized, the 
enormous cost of it is not so material. The ex- 
pense of the German army is not greater than 
our armies, plus what we spend for games and 
sport and colonial adventure. 

Germany has 4,570 miles of frontier to guard, 
to begin with, and her total area is 208,780 square 
miles, or an area one fourth less than that of our 
State of Texas, with a population per square 
mile of 310.4. Of this population 1,000,000, 
roughly, are subjects of foreign powers. Five 
hundred thousand are from Austria-Hungary, 
100,000 each from Finland and Russia, nearly 
100,000 from Italy, some 17,000 Americans, and 
so on. In 1900 the population speaking German 
numbered 51,000,000. 

This compact little country is the very heart 
of Europe, surrounded by Russia, Austria-Hun- 
gary, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Hol- 
land, Denmark, and, across the North Sea, 
England. In the case of trouble in Europe, Ger- 
many is the centre. Nothing can happen that 
does not concern her, that must not indeed con- 
cern her vitally. She has fought at one time or 
another in the last hundred years with Russia, 
Austria-Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, France, 
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and England, and 



THE GERMAN ARMY 417 

the various German states among themselves ; or 
her soldiers have fought against their soldiers, 
whether or not the various countries named were 
geographically and politically then what they 
are now. 

Russia's population in 1910 was 160,748,000, 
and including the Finnish provinces, 163,778,800. 
Since 1897 the population of Russia has increased 
at the annual rate of 2,732,000. The boundaries 
between Russia and Germany are mere sand 
dunes, and by rail the Russian outposts are only 
a few hours from Berlin. France is only across 
the Rhine, and it is no secret that some months 
ago Great Britain had worked out a plan by 
which she could put 150,000 troops on the fron- 
tiers of Germany, at the service of France, in 
thirteen days. Germany's ocean commerce must 
pass through the Straits of Dover, down the 
English Channel, within striking distance of 
Plymouth, Portsmouth, Dover, Brest, and Cher- 
bourg. France, which has been looked upon as 
a somewhat negligible quantity, has taken on a 
new lease of life. When Napoleon died, in 1821, 
he left France swept clean of her fighting men, 
whose bones were bleaching all the way from 
Madrid to Moscow. France has recuperated 
and is almost another nation to-day from the 
stand-point of virility. She far surpasses Ger- 
many in literature, art, and science, and is tak- 



418 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing her old place in the world. She led the way 
in motor construction, in field-artillery, in avia- 
tion, and now she is producing a champion mid- 
dle-weight sparrer, and, marvel of marvels, has 
actually beaten Scotland at foot-ball! She has 
always had brains, and now her stability and vi- 
rility are reviving. This has not passed unno- 
ticed in Germany. No wonder Germany looks 
upon her navy as something more than a Win- 
stonchurchillian luxury! 

One may understand at once from this situa- 
tion, and from her past history, that Germany 
has the sound good sense not to be influenced by 
the latest school of sentimentalists, who pretend 
to believe that the world is a polyglot Sunday- 
school, with converted millionaires as teachers 
therein; or, if not that, a counting-house, where 
all questions of honor, race, religion, love, pride, 
all the questions which bubble their answers in 
our blood, are to be settled by weighing their 
comparative cost in dollars. We do not realize 
how new is this word sentimental. John Wesley, 
writing of this word *' sentimental " as used in 
Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," says: " Senti- 
mental, what is that.'^ It is not English, it is 
not sense, it conveys no determinate idea. Yet 
one fool makes many, and this nonsensical word 
(who would believe it) is become a fashionable 
one." 



THE GERMAN ARMY 419 

Germany lias been taught by bitter experi- 
ences, and harsh masters, that the ultimate 
power to command must rest with that authority 
which, if necessary, can compel people to obey. 
They recognize, too, the mawkish mental foolery 
of any plan of living together which ignores the 
part which physical force must necessarily play 
in any political or social life which is complete. 
They agree, too, as does every intelligent man in 
Christendom, that the appeal to reason is far 
preferable to an appeal to war. But, pray, what 
is to be done where there is no reason to appeal 
to.'^ Are reasonable men to strip themselves of 
all armor, and suffer unreason to prevail? 

An army or a fleet is no more an incitement to 
war among reasonable men, than a policeman is 
an incentive to burglary or homicide. An army 
is not a contemptuous protest against Christian- 
ity; it is a sad commentary on Christianity's 
failure and inefficiency. An army and a fleet are 
merely a reasonable precaution which every 
nation must take, while awaiting the conversion 
of mankind from the predatory to the polite. 

As yet the Germans have not been overtaken 
by the tepid wave of feminism, which for the 
moment is bathing the prosperity-softened cult- 
ure of America and England. It is a harsh 
remedy, but both America and England would 
gain something of virility if they were shot over. 



420 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

We are all apt enough to become womanish, agi- 
tated, or acidulous, according to age and condi- 
tion, when we are reaping in security the fields 
cleared, enriched, and planted by a hardy an- 
cestry of pioneers. There were no self-conscious 
peace-makers; no worshippers of those two epi- 
cene idols: a God too much man, and a man 
too much God; no devotees of third-sexism, in 
the days of Waterloo and Gettysburg, when we 
had men's tasks to occupy us. 

We are playing with our dolls just now, driving 
our coaches over the roads, sailing our yachts in 
the waters, eating the fruits of the fields that 
have been won for us by the sweat and blood of 
those gone before. Germany has no leisure for 
that, no doll's house as yet to play in, and she is 
perhaps more fortunate than she knows. 

One can understand, too, that Germany has 
little patience with the confused thinking which 
maintains that military training only makes sol- 
diers and only incites to martial ambitions ; when, 
on the contrary, she sees every day that it makes 
youths better and stronger citizens, and produces 
that self-respect, self-control, and cosmopolitan 
sympathy which more than aught else lessen the 
chances of conflict. 

I can vouch for it that there are fewer personal 
jealousies, bickerings, quarrels in the mess-room 
or below decks of a war-ship, or in a soldiers' 



THE GERMAN ARMY 421 

camp or barracks, than in many church and 
Sunday-school assembhes, in many club smok- 
ing-rooms, in many ladies' sewing or reading 
circles. Nothing does away more surely with 
quarrelsomeness than the training of men to get 
on together comfortably, each giving way a 
little in the narrow lanes of life, so that each 
may pass without moral shoving. There are no 
such successful schools for the teaching of this 
fundamental diplomacy as the sister services, the 
army and the navy. 

My latest visit to Germany has converted me 
completely to the wisdom of compulsory service. 
Nor am I merely an academic disciple. I have 
had a course in it myself, and were it possible 
in America I should give any boy of mine the 
benefit of the same training. In Germany, at any 
rate, no student of the situation there would deny 
that, barring Bismarck, the army has done more 
for the nation than any other one factor that can 
be named. Soldiers and sailors train themselves, 
and train others, first of all to self-control, not 
to war. It is a pity that "compulsory service" 
has come to mean merely training to fight. In 
Germany, at any rate, it means far more than 
that. Two generations of Germans have been 
taught to take care of themselves physically 
without drawing a sword. 

It is rather a puzzling commentary upon the 



422 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

growth of democracy, that in America and in 
England, where most has been conceded to the 
majority, there is least inclination on their part to 
accept the necessary personal burden of keeping 
themselves fit, not necessarily for war, but for 
peace, by accepting universal and compulsory 
training. The only fair law would be one de- 
manding that no one should be admitted to look 
on at a game of cricket, foot-ball, or base-ball 
who could not pass a mild examination in these 
games, or give proof of an equivalent training. 
That would be honorable democracy in the realm 
of sport. 

There formerly existed in Bavaria a supple- 
mentary tax on estates left by persons who had 
not served in the active army. It was done away 
with at the formation of the empire. There is a 
proposal now to vote such an additional tax for 
all Germany, and a very fair tax it would be. 

I am not discussing here the question of com- 
pulsory service in England. It is not difficult to 
see that part of England's army must of neces- 
sity be a professional army, which can be sent 
here and there and everywhere, and that con- 
scription would not answer the purpose, for com- 
pulsory conscription could hardly demand of its 
recruits that they should serve in India, in Can- 
ada, or in Bermuda or Egypt, for the length of 
time necessary to make their service of value. 



THE GERMAN ARMY 423 

Conscription, too, on a scale to make an army 
serviceable against tlie trained troops of the 
Continent is out of the question. Therefore, so 
far as compulsory service for military duty only 
is concerned, I see no hope for it in England. 
But in a land of free men such as is, or used to 
be, England, and in America, compulsory ser- 
vice ought to be undertaken with pride and with 
pleasure, as a moral, not as a military, duty for 
the salvation of the country from internal foes, 
and as a nucleus around which could rally the 
nation as a whole in case of attack from external 
foes. Patriotism among us has come to a pretty 
pass indeed when the nation is divided into two 
classes: those growling against the taxation of 
their surplus ; and those with their tongues hang- 
ing out in anticipation of, and their hands clutch- 
ing for, unearned doles. And now, the more 
shame to us, must be added a third class who 
use public office for private profit. What if we 
all turned to and gave something without being 
forced to do so? Where would the "Yellow peril " 
and the ' ' German menace "be then ? We should 
have much less exciting and inciting talk and 
writing if our nerves and digestions were in bet- 
ter order. Nothing calms the nerves, increases 
confidence, and lessens the chance of promiscu- 
ous quarrelling better than hard work. 

Even if what the German army has accom- 



424 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

plished along these lines were not true, there can 
be no freedom of political speculation or experi- 
ment, no time to make mistakes and to retrieve 
the situation, when one is surrounded on all 
sides by overt or potential enemies. Germany 
must have a powerful army and fleet, must have 
a strong and autocratic government, or she is 
lost. "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland." She 
can permit no silly, no stupid, no excited major- 
ity to imperil her safety as a nation. If Germany 
were governed as is France, where they have had 
nine new governments since the beginning of the 
twentieth century, and forty-four since the re- 
public replaced the empire forty-one years ago — 
not counting six dismissals of the cabinet when 
the prime minister remained — or fifty changes 
of government in less than that number of years, 
Germany would have lost her place on the map. 
France remains only because, so far as defence 
is concerned, France is France plus the British 
fleet. 

Political geography is the sufficient reason for 
Germany's army and navy. Let us be fair in 
these judgments and admit at once, that if Japan 
were where Mexico is, and Russia where Canada 
is, and Germany separated from us by a few 
hours' steaming, certain peace-mongers would 
have been hanged long ago, and our cooing doves 
of peace would have had molten tar mixed with 



THE GERMAN ARMY 425 

their feathers. An Itahan proverb runs, "It is 
easy to scoff at a bull from a window," and we 
indulge in not a little of such babyish effrontery 
from our safe place in the world. Germany, on 
the other hand, looks out upon the world from 
no such safe window-seat; she is down in the 
ring, and must be prepared at all hazards to take 
care of herself. That is a reason, too, why Ger- 
many offers little resistance to the ruling of an 
autocratic militarism. The sailors and the 
stokers would rather obey captain and officers, 
however they may have been chosen for them, 
than to be sunk at sea; and nowadays Germany 
is ever on the high seas, battling hard to protect 
and to increase her commerce abroad, and to 
protect her huge industrial population at home. 
Germany can take no chances for the moment, 
for only "Wer sich regiert, der ist mit Zufall 
fertig." 

One wishes often that one's lips were not 
sealed, one's pen not stayed by the imperious 
demands of honor, to abstain from all mention 
of discoveries or conversations made under the 
roof of hospitality, for nothing could well be 
more enlightening than a description of a chat 
between the great war-lord of Germany and a 
leading pacifist: the one completely equipped 
with know^ledge of the history, temper, and tem- 



426 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

perament of his people; the other obsessed by a 
fantastic exaggeration of the power and influence 
of money, even in the world of culture and in- 
ternational politics, and preaching his panacea 
in the land, of all others, where even now mere 
money has the least influence, all honor to that 
land! 

Spinoza, the greatest of modern Jews, and the 
father of modern philosophy, writes: "It is not 
enough to point out what ought to be; we must 
also point out what can be, so that every one 
may receive his due Avithout depriving others of 
what is due to them." And in another place: 
"Things should not be the subject of ridicule or 
complaint, but should be understood." Those 
who know little of the history of the develop- 
ment of Germany, and particularly of Prussia, 
cannot possibly understand another reason for 
the political apathy of the Germans and their 
pleased support of their army. It is this: they 
have been trained in everything except self- 
government, in everything except politics. Per- 
haps their governors know them better than we 
do. Their progress has come from direction 
from above, not from assertion from below. 
The art or arts of self-government, throughout 
their development as a nation, have been forcibly 
omitted from their curriculum. Every step in 



THE GERMAN ARMY 427 

our national progress, on the contrary, lias been 
taken by the people, shoulder to shoulder, break- 
ing their way up and out into light and freedom. 
There is little or no trace of any such movement 
of the people in Germany, and there is little 
taste for it, and no experience to make such effort 
successful. We, who have profited by the teach- 
ing of this political experience, do not realize in 
the least how handicapped are the people who 
have not had it. 

One hundred years ago half the inhabitants of 
Prussia were practically in the toils of serfdom. 
It was only by an edict of 1807, to take effect 
in 1810, that personal serfdom with its conse- 
quences, especially the oppressive obligation of 
menial service, was abolished in the Prussian 
monarchy. Caste extended actually to land. 
All land had a certain status, from which the 
owners and their retainers took their political 
position and rights. The edict of 1807 was in 
reality a land reform bill, and gave for the first 
time free trade in land in Prussia. It was vom 
Stein, a Bismarck born too soon, who induced 
Frederick William II, King of Prussia, and 
grandson of the Great Elector, to abolish serf- 
dom, to open the civil service to all classes, and 
to concede certain municipal rights to the towns. 
But vom Stein was dismissed from the service 



428 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of his weak-kneed sovereign on the ground that he 
was an enemy of France, and was obhged to take 
refuge in Russia. Like other martyrs, his efforts 
watered the political earth for a fruitful harvest. 
It is well to know where we are in the world's 
culture and striving when we speak of other 
nations. What were we doing, what was the 
rest of the world doing, in those days when the 
Hanoverian peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and 
Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of 
this German army, now the most perfect ma- 
chine of its kind in the world? These were the 
days prepared for by Jonathan Edwards, Ben- 
jamin Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau; by Pitt and 
Louis XV, and George III; the days of near 
memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and Clive; days 
when Hogarth was caricaturing London; days 
when the petticoats of the Pompadour swept 
both India and Canada into the possession of 
England. These names and the atmosphere they 
produce, show by comparison how rough a fellow 
was this Prussia of only a hundred years ago. 
He had not come into the circle of the pohte or of 
the political world. He was tumbling about, un- 
licked, untaught, inexperienced, already forget- 
ful of the training of the greatest school-master 
of the previous century, Frederick the Great, 
who had made a man of him. 



THE GERMAN ARMY 429 

We were already politicians to a man in those 
days, and the Englishman Pitt was map-maker, 
by special warrant, to all Europe. 

When the Prussians were serfs politically, our 
House of Representatives, in 1796, debated 
whether to insert in their reply to the President's 
speech the remark that "this nation is the freest 
and most enlightened in the world." It is true 
that this was at the time when Europe was pro- 
ducing Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, 
Fichte, Mozart, Haydn, Herschel, and about 
ready to introduce Walter Scott, Wordsworth, 
Shelley, Heine, Balzac, Beethoven, and Cuvier; 
when Turner was painting, W^att building the 
steam-engine. Napoleon in command of the 
French armies, and Nelson of the British fleet; 
but this bombastic babble of ours harmed no- 
body then, and only serves to show what a 
number of intellectual serfs must have been 
members of that particular House of Represent- 
atives. 

We have not overcome this habit of slapdash 
comparative criticism, for only the other day a 
distinguished American inventor left Berlin with 
these words as his final message: "We have 
nothing to learn from Germany." But in the 
nineteenth century, where does the American of 
sober intelligence, if Lincoln be omitted, find a 



430 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

match for Bismarck as a statesman, Heine as a 
wit and song-writer, Wagner, Brahms, and Bee- 
thoven as musicians, Goethe as a man of letters 
and poet, the still hving influence of Lessing and 
Winckelmann as critics, Fichte as a scholarly pa- 
triot, Hegel and Kant as philosophers, von Hum- 
boldt, Liebig, Helmholtz, Bunsen, and Haeckel 
as scientists, Moltke and Roon as soldiers, 
Ranke and Mommsen as historians, Auerbach, 
Spielhagen, Sudermann, Freytag, "Fritz" Ren- 
ter, and Hauptmann as novelists and dramatists, 
Krupp and Borsig as manufacturers, and the 
Rothschilds as bankers? Lincoln, Lee, Sherman, 
Jackson, and Grant may equal these men in their 
own departments, but aside from them our only 
superiority, and a very questionable superiority 
it is, lies in our trust-and-tariff-incubated million- 
aires. Let us try to see straight, if only that we 
may learn and profit by the superiority of others. 

These explanations that I have given, his- 
torical, political, external, and internal, offer 
reasons worth pondering both why we do not 
understand Germany's huge armament and why 
Germany looks upon it as a necessity. 

However much the expenditure on fleet and 
army may be disguised, the burden is colossal. 
Li the year 1878 the net expenditure, ordinary 
and extraordinary, for purposes of defence, for 



THE GERMAN ARMY 431 

army and navy and all other military purposes 
whatsoever including pensions, amounted to 452,- 
000,000 marks; in 1888, to 660,000,000 marks; 
in 1898, to 882,000,000 marks; and in 1908, to 
1,481,000,000 marks. 

The total expenses, net, of the empire in 1908 
were 1,735,000,000 marks, showing that only 
254,000,000 marks out of the grand total of 
1,735,000,000 were spent for other than military 
purposes. As the army and navy now stand at 
a peace strength of some 700,000 men, and as 
these men are all in the prime of their working 
power, the loss in wages and in productive work 
may be put very conservatively at 600,000,000 
marks, which brings the cost of the support of 
the military establishment of Germany up to 
2,000,000,000 marks and more per annum, or 
$500,000,000. 

Many Americans were dismayed when our 
total national expenditure reached the $1,000,- 
000,000 point, and the Congress voting this 
expenditure was nicknamed the "Billion-dollar 
Congress." What would we say of an expen- 
diture of half a billion dollars for defence alone! 
With what admiration, too, must we regard 
65,000,000 people, living in an area one quarter 
smaller than Texas, on a by-no-means rich or 
fertile soil, who can bear cheerfully the burden. 



432 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

each year, of half our total national expendi- 
ture, merely on the military and naval barri- 
cade which enables them to toil in peace and 
security. 

Humanity has, indeed, made but a poor zigzag 
progress from the gorilla; Christianity, just now 
engaged in blessing the rival banners of warriors 
setting out for one another's throats, has failed 
ignominiously to bring the wolf in man to bap- 
tism, when the central state of Christian Europe 
must arm to the teeth one in every eighteen of 
her adult male inhabitants, and spend half a 
billion dollars a year, to protect herself from 
assault and plunder. 

If the hairy, skin-clad cave-dwellers, or the 
man who left us the Neanderthal skull, could 
have a look at us now, here in Berlin, in many 
ways the centre of the most enlightened people 
in the world, they would undoubtedly go mad 
trying to understand what we mean by the word 
"progress." And yet we smile indulgently at 
the poor farmers in Afghanistan who till their 
fields with a rifle slung across their shoulders. 
What is Germany doing but that! And an 
enormously heavy rifle it is, costing just seven 
times as much as all other national expenditures 
together; in short, it costs seven marks of sol- 
dier to protect every one mark of plough, I 



THE GERMAN ARMY 433 

admit frankly the horror and the absurdity of 
all this; but as an argument for disarmament, 
"it does not lie," as the lawyers phrase it. It is 
a criticism, and an unanswerable one, of our 
failure as human beings to enthrone reason and 
to tame our passions; but it is a veritable call 
to arms to protect ourselves, not a reason for 
not doing so. Let the international gluttons 
overeat themselves till they are seriously ill; 
but it would be madness to starve ourselves in 
the meantime, and yet that is the grotesque logic 
of certain of our preachers of disarmament. 

At the moment of writing there are 1,000,000 
men at each other's throats in the Balkans, 
there is a revolution in Mexico, and incipient 
anarchy in Central America; as an emollient to 
this. Great Britain is about to present a bust of 
the late King Edward to the Peace Palace at the 
Hague! I can imagine myself saying "Pretty 
pussy, nice pussy," to the wild-cats I have shot 
in Nebraska and Dakota, but I should not be 
here if I had; and however small my value 
to the world I live in, I estimate it as worth at 
least a ton of wild-cats. 

I am bound, however, in fairness to call the 
attention of the unwary dabbler in statistics to 
a point of grave importance in dealing with Ger- 
man finances. The German Empire, so far as 



434 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

expenditure and income are concerned, is merely 
an office, a clearing-house so to speak, for the 
states which together make up the empire. The 
expenses of the empire, for example, in 1910 were 
$757,900,000 and of the army and navy, includ- 
ing extraordinary expenditures, $314,919,325; 
this does not include pensions, clerical expenses, 
interest, sinking-fund, and loss of productive 
labor, as did the figures on a preceding page. 
To the ignorant or to the malicious, who quote 
these figures to bolster up a socialist or pacifist 
preachment, this looks as though Germany had 
spent one half of her grand total on the army and 
navy. But this is quite wrong. In addition to 
the expenditures of this imperial clearing-house 
called the German Empire, there was spent by 
the states $1,467,325,000 : the so-called clearing- 
house bearing the whole burden of expenses for 
army and navy, the separate states nothing ex- 
cept the per capita tax, called the matriculation 
tax, of some 80 pfennigs. To make this matter 
still more clear, as it is a constant source of error 
not only to the foreigner but to the Germans 
themselves, the income of the empire for 1910 
was $757,900,000, the income of all the states 
$1,463,150,000, or of the empire and the states 
combined $2,221,050,000. In the same way the 
debt of the empire in 1910 stood at $1,224,- 



THE GERMAN ARMY 435 

150,000, and the debt of the states of the empire 
at $3,856,325,000, or a grand total outstanding 
indebtedness of all Germany of $5,080,475,000. 

Of late years the imperial expenditure of Great 
Britain, for example, has amounted to some 
$935,000,000 a year; but various local bodies 
spend also some $900,000,000 a year. Some 
of this is cross-spending, but the grand total 
amounts to some $1,500,000,000 a year. 

Before writing or speaking of Germany it is 
well to know at least what Germany is. To pick 
up a hand-book and to quote therefrom the fig- 
ures relating to the German Empire, as though 
these covered Germany, as is often done, is as 
accurate and helpful to the inquirer, as though 
one should take the figures of the New York 
clearing-house as accurate descriptions of the 
total and detailed business of all the New York 
banks and trust companies. A clearing-house is 
merely a piece of machinery for the adjustment 
of differences between a host of debtors and 
creditors. The comparative cost of the German 
army and navy can only be figured properly 
against the income and expenditure of the total 
wealth of all Germany. And all Germany is 
something more than the German Empire, 
which in certain respects is only a book-keeper, 
an adjuster of differences. 



436 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

"Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? 
Ist's Preussenland? Ist's Schwabenland? 
Ist's wo am Rhein die Rebe bluht? 
Ist's wo am Belt die Move zieht? 
O nein! O nein! O nein! 
Sein Vaterland muss grosser sein. 

"Das ganze Deutschland soli es sein! 
O Gott vom Himmel, sieh' darein, 
TJnd gib uns rechten deutschen Muth; 
Dass wir es lieben treu und gut! 
Das soil es sein! das soil es sein! 
Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein!" 

The official title of the sovereign is not Em- 
peror of Germany, or Emperor of the Germans, 
but German Emperor. Thus the territorial 
rights of other heads of states are safeguarded. 
Even the popularity of the first Emperor, who 
wished to be named Emperor of Germany and 
who disputed with Bismarck for hours over the 
question, could not bring this about, and he was 
proclaimed at Versailles merely German Em- 
peror. 

However heavy the burden of armament may 
be, we must be careful to put such expenditure 
in its proper perspective and in its proper rela- 
tions, not only to the German Empire, which for 
official, clerical, and statistical matters is quite 
a different entity, but to "das ganze Deutsch- 
land." The German Empire is the clearing- 
house, the adjutant, the executive officer, the 



THE GERMAN ARMY 437 

official clerk, the representative in many social, 
financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of 
Germany; but it is not, and never for a moment 
should be confused with, what all Germans love, 
and what it has cost them blood and tears and 
great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the 
nations, the German Fatherland! 

In 1910 the total funded debt of the empire 
amounted to 4,896,600,000 marks, and the debt 
in 1912 had risen to 5,396,887,801 marks. In 
the six years ending March, 1911, Germany's 
debt increased by $415,000,000. 

In 1910 the funded debt of Germany (empire 
and states) was $4,896,600,000; of France $6,- 
905,000,000; of England $3,894,500,000, and of 
Russia $4,880,750,000. It is a curious psychical 
and social phenomenon that, though we are as 
suspicious as criminals of one another's good 
faith in keeping the peace, we are veritable angels 
of innocence in trusting one another financially, 
for back of these huge debts we keep in ready 
money, that is, gold, to pay them: Germany at 
the present writing $275,000,000 in the Reichs- 
bank; France $640,000,000 in the Bank of France; 
England a paltry $175,000,000 in the Bank of 
England; and Russia $625,000,000 in the Bank 
of Russia. We all live upon credit, an elastic 
moral tie which seems to be illimitably stretch- 



438 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

able, and both a nation's and an individual's 
wealth is measured not by what he has, but by 
what he is, that is to say, by his character or 
credit. It is startling to find how we distrust one 
another along certain lines and how we trust one 
another along others. The total amount of gold 
in these four countries would just about pay the 
interest at four per cent, for two years on their 
total indebtedness! 

From what we have seen of the proportion of 
expenditure that goes to military purposes, it 
cannot be denied that Germany is increasing her 
liabilities at an extraordinary rate, and largely 
for purposes of protection. In the last two years 
the interest on her increased debt alone, at four 
per cent., amounts to $5,000,000; while the in- 
terest at four per cent, upon military expendi- 
tures of all kinds amounts to the tidy sum of 
$20,000,000 per annum. The German, however, 
faces these facts and figures, not as a matter of 
choice, not as a matter of insurance wholly, but 
as a hard necessity. It is what the delayed con- 
version of the world is costing him, not to speak 
of what it costs the rest of us. He is surrounded 
by enemies ; he is not by nature a fighting man ; 
his whole industrial and commercial progress 
and his amassed wealth have come from training, 
training, training; and he sees no alternative. 



THE GERMAN ARMY 439 

and I am bound to say that I see none either, but 
a nation trained also to defence, cost what it 
may. 

The last German estimates (1912) balance 
with a revenue and expenditure of $671,222,605. 
The naval expenditure is put at $114,306,575 ; the 
army expenditure is put at $192,627,080. Both 
the army and navy are being largely increased. 
In the year 1916 the strength of the navy 
is expected to be about 79,000 men, and of 
the army and navy combined 767,000. In the 
last ten years two nations have almost doubled 
their naval personnel: Germany has increased 
hers from 31,157 to 60,805, and Austria-Hun- 
gary from 9,069 to 17,277. In Great Britain the 
increase has been about one seventh, and this 
one seventh is about equal to the present strength 
of Austria. 

The gross naval expenditure, estimated, of the 
United States for 1912 amounts to $132,848,030, 
and the number of men 63,468. The gross naval 
expenditure of Great Britain, estimated, for the 
same year is put at $224,410,235, and the number 
of men 134,000. The gross naval expenditure of 
Germany is put at $114,306,575, which includes 
$489,235 for air-ships and experiments there- 
with, the number of men 66,783. France pro- 
poses to spend, plus an addition due to opera- 



440 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

tions in Morocco, $90,000,000, number of men 
58,404; and Japan $44,309,145, number of men 
49,389. Two new corps have been voted for the 
German army, to be numbered 24 and 25; one 
is for the Russian frontier, with head-quarters at 
Allenstein, and the other for the French frontier, 
with head-quarters at Sarrebourg or Mulhouse. 
A German army corps on a war footing com- 
prises about 52,000 men, with 150 guns and 
16,000 horses. The reader should notice, as a re- 
minder of the still latent jealousies of the differ- 
ent states of the German Empire, that the three 
army corps raised in Bavaria are not numbered 
consecutively, twenty-one, twenty-two, and 
twenty-three, but one, two, and three! 

To the American the pay of the German 
troops, officers and men, is ludicrously small. It 
is evident that men do not undertake to fit them- 
selves to be officers, and to struggle through fre- 
quent and severe examinations to remain officers, 
for the pay they receive. A lieutenant receives 
for the first three years $300 a year, from the 
fourth to the sixth year $425, from the seventh to 
the ninth year $495, from the tenth to the twelfth 
year $550, and after the twelfth year $600 a 
year. A captain receives from the first to the 
fourth year $850, from the fifth to the eighth 
year $1,150, and the ninth year and after $1,275 



THE GERMAN ARMY 441 

a year. Of one hundred officers who join, only 
an average of eight ever attain to the command of 
a regiment. In Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, pro- 
motion is quicker by from one to three years 
than in Prussia. In Prussia promotion to Oher- 
leutnant averages 10 years, to captain or Ritt- 
meister 15 years, to major 25 years, to colonel 33 
years, and to general 37 years. It would not be 
altogether inhuman if these gentlemen occasion- 
ally drank a toast to war and pestilence ! 

A commanding general, or general inspector 
of cavalry or field artillery, receives $3,495; a 
division commander, or inspector of cavalry, 
field and heavy artillery, $3,388 ; a brigade com- 
mander, %'it,5Q5\ commander of a regiment, or 
officer of the general staff of the same rank, 
$2,193. There are various additions to these 
sums for travelling, keep of horses, house-rent, 
and the like. All soldiers and officers travel at 
reduced rates on the railways, and are allowed a 
certain amount of luggage free. It is a commen- 
tary upon the three nations, that in Germany the 
soldier receives a reduced rate when travelling, 
in England the golfer pays a reduced rate, and 
in America, until lately, the politicians were 
given free passes. One could almost produce the 
three countries from that limited knowledge. 

At the cadet school at Gross Lichterfelde there 



442 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

are a thousand pupils. They are taught riding, 
swimming, dancing, French, Enghsh, mathe- 
matics, and of course receive technical military 
instruction. The fee is $200, but for the sons of 
officers, and according to their means, the fees 
are reduced to $112, $75, and even as low as $22, 
and in some deserving cases no fee at all is 
charged. 

There is no professional army in Germany, as 
in England and in America. Every German 
who is physically fit must serve practically from 
the age of seventeen to forty -five. Those in the 
infantry serve two years; those in the cavalry 
and horse artillery and mounted rifles, three 
years. About forty-eight per cent, who are ex- 
amined are rejected as unfit, not necessarily be- 
cause they are incapable of service, but because 
the expense of training all is too great. These 
men receive 40 pfennigs a day, 27 pfennigs being 
deducted for their food. 

There are some 40,000 men who join the army 
voluntarily for a term of two or three years, and 
who re-enlist and become non-commissioned 
officers, and if they remain twelve years they are 
entitled to $200 on leaving the service, and head 
the lists of candidates for the railway, postal, 
police, street-cleaning, and other civil services. 
Some 10,000 men who have passed a certain 



THE GERMAN ARMY 443 

examination serve only one year and are entitled 
to certain privileges. 

Each man in the infantry serves 2 years in the 
active army, 5 years in the active reserve, 5 years 
in the first division of the Landwehr, 6 years in 
the second division of the Landwehr, and 6 years 
in the Landsturm. Colonel Gadke calculates that 
Germany has now under arms not less than 
714,000 soldiers and sailors, and that 4,800,000 
can be put into the field if wanted out of the 
6,000,000 who have done service with the colors. 
Out of this enormous total, practically none, ac- 
cording to the last census, is illiterate. Our 
American census of 1910 gives the number of 
men of militia age in New England as 1,458,900, 
and in the whole country 20,473,684. 

Promotion from the ranks, as we understand 
it, is practically unknown. The German officers 
pass through the ranks, it is true, as part of their 
education at the beginning of their military 
career, but those who do so join in the beginning 
as candidates for commissions, and have been 
provisionally accepted by the commander and 
ofiicers of the regiment they propose to join, as 
must every candidate for a commission in the 
German army. If the candidate is not wanted, 
it is hinted to him that this is the case, and he 
must go elsewhere, as this decision is final. Every 



444 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

German regiment's officers' mess is thus in some 
sort a club. 

Officers are supplied from the cadet corps, and 
from those who join the ranks as candidates for 
commissions. All cadets must pass through a 
war-school before obtaining a commission. Of 
these there are 10 in Prussia, Wiirtemberg, and 
Saxony, and 1 at Munich in Bavaria. They 
there receive their commissions as second lieu- 
tenants. There are 9 Prussian schools, the 
Hauptkadettenanstalt at Gross Lichterfelde, and 
8 Kadetten-Hauser; and 1 at Dresden and 1 at 
Munich. Some of these I have visited, and been 
made at home with the greatest courtesy and hos- 
pitality. These German cadet schools are to a 
great extent charitable institutions for the sons 
of officers and civilian officials. The charges 
range, as I have indicated above, from $200 a 
year to nothing at all. 

There are in addition schools of musketry, a 
school for instruction in machine-gun practice, 
instruction in infantry battalion practice, a 
school of military gymnastics, of military equita- 
tion, officers' riding-schools, a military technical 
academy at Charlottenburg, where officers may 
study the technical engineering and communi- 
cation services, an artillery and engineer school 
at Munich, a field-artillery school of gunnery, a 



THE GERMAN ARMY 445 

foot-artillery school of gunnery, a cavalry tele- 
graph school, and the staff colleges. 

Of technical military matters I know nothing. 
I have some experience in handling horses in 
harness and under saddle, and on subjects with 
which I am familiar I venture to pass judgments 
in the class-room. I have visited many of these 
class-rooms, and listened to the teaching and 
lectures in French, English, strategy, and polit- 
ical geography, and kindred topics, and if the 
rest of the instruction is on a par with what I 
heard there is no criticism to be made. I may 
not say where, but one of the instructors in 
French was a real pleasure to listen to. 

The courses and examinations which lead up, 
in the Kriegesakademie, or staff college, to the 
grade of fitness for the general staff, or the tech- 
nical division of the general staff, or administra- 
tive staff work, or employment as instructors, 
are of the very stiffest. An officer who succeeds 
in reaching such proficiency, that he is sent up 
to the general staff must be a very blue ribbon 
of a scholar in his own field. 

The quarters, the food, the training, are Spar- 
tan indeed at the cadet schools, but how valu- 
able that is, is shown in the faces, manners, 
physique, and general bearing of the picked 
youths one sees at the Kriegesakademie in Ber- 



446 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

lin. No one after seeing these fellows would deny 
for a moment the value of a sound, hard disci- 
pline. The same may be seen at our own West 
Point, where the transformation of many a 
country bumpkin, into an officer and a gentle- 
man, in four years is almost unbelievable. 

The truth is that most of us suffer from lack 
of discipline, and the intelligent men of every 
nation will one day insist that, if the state is to 
meddle in insurance and other matters, it must 
logically, and for its own salvation, demand 
compulsory service; not necessarily for war, but 
for social and economic peace within its own 
boundaries. It is a political absurdity that you 
may tax individuals to provide against accident 
and sickness to themselves, but that you may 
not tax individuals by compulsory service to 
provide against accident and sickness to the 
state. There can be nothing but ultimate con- 
fusion where the state pays a man if he is ill, 
pays him if he is hurt, pays him when he is old, 
and yet does not force him to keep well, and thus 
avoid accident and a pauper's old age by oblig- 
ing him to submit to two or three years' sound 
physical training. Whether the training is done 
with a gun or without it matters little. Most 
men of our breed like to know how to kill things, 
so that a gun would probably be an inducement. 



THE GERMAN ARMY 447 

The more one knows of the severe demands 
upon the officers of the German army and of 
their small pay, the more one realizes that if they 
are not angels there must be some further ex- 
planation of their willingness to undertake the 
profession. First of all, the Emperor is a soldier 
and wears at all times the soldier's uniform. 
Further, he gives from his private purse a small 
allowance monthly to the poorer officers of the 
guard regiments. A German officer receives 
consideration on all sides, whether it be in a 
shop, a railway-carriage, a drawing-room, or at 
court. 

To a certain extent his uniform is a dowry; he 
expects and often gets a good marriage portion 
in return for his shoulder-straps and brass but- 
tons; and in every case it gives him a recognized 
social position, in a country where the social 
lines are drawn far more strictly than in any 
other country outside of Austria and India. 
This constant wearing of the sword is no new 
thing. Tacitus, who would have been an un- 
compromising advocate of compulsory service 
had he lived in our time, writes: "A German 
transacts no business, public or private, without 
being completely armed. The right of carrying 
arms is assumed by no person whatever till the 
state has declared him duly qualified." It is 



448 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the recognized occupation of the nobihty, and, 
in very many famihes, a tradition. In the army 
of Saxony, on January 1, 1911, out of every 
hundred officers of the war ministry, of the gen- 
eral commands, and of the higher staff, 44.33 per 
cent, were noblemen; of the officers of the infan- 
try, 26.19 were noblemen; of the cavalry, 60.92 
were noblemen; and of the officers of the entire 
army, all arms, 24.98 were noblemen. 

It is worth chronicling in this connection, for 
the benefit of those who wish a real insight into 
German social life, that few people discriminate 
between the old nobility, or men who take their 
titles from the possession of land and their de- 
scendants, and the new and morbidly disliked 
nobility, who have bought or gained their patents 
of nobility, as is done often enough in England, 
by profuse contributions to charity or to semi- 
political and cultural undertakings favored by 
the court, or by direct contributions to party 
funds, by valuable services rendered, or by mere 
length of service. This new nobility, anxious 
about their status, satisfied to have arrived, jeal- 
ous of rivals, are the dead weight which ties 
Germany fast to bureaucratic government and 
to a policy of no change. They represent, even 
in educated Germany, a complacent mediocrity; 
indignant at rebuke, indifferent to progress. 



THE GERMAN ARMY 449 

heedless of experience, impatient of criticism, 
haters of haste, and jealous of superiority. 
Even Bismarck, the creator of this bureaucracy, 
lamented the insolence and bad manners of the 
state servants. 

The essential and ever-present quality of the 
real aristocrat and of a real aristocracy is, of 
course, courage. It may dislike change, but it 
is not afraid of it. The real gentleman, of course, 
does not care whether he is a gentleman or not. 
The characteristic of an artificial, tailor-made 
aristocracy is timidity and a shrinking from 
change. This new nobility, created because it 
is carefully charitable, or serviceable, or long 
in ofl&ce, is not only in possession of the civil 
service, but occupies high posts in the army and 
navy. While not minimizing its value, it is 
everywhere maintained in Germany that it acts 
as a bulwark against progress. They are a 
nobility of office-holders, and they partake of the 
qualities and characteristics of the office-holder 
everywhere. They sometimes forget the coun- 
try in the office ; while the older nobility, which 
made Germany, despises the office except as an 
instrument or weapon to be used for the welfare 
of the country. The political pessimism in Ger- 
many to-day is caused by, and comes from, this 
army of the new nobility. 



450 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Americans and English both write of Germany, 
and speak of it, as being in the grip of a small 
group of aristocrats. Not at all; it is in the shaky 
and self-conscious control of men whose patents 
of nobility were given them with their office, a 
titled bureaucracy, in short. Let us prove this 
statement by running through the list of the 
chief officers of the state. Of the officials of the 
German Empire: the chancellor's grandfather, 
Bethmann-Hollweg, was a professor, and after- 
ward minister of education; the secretary of 
state's father was plain Herr Kiderlein-Wachter; 
the under-secretary of state is Herr Zimmer- 
mann; the secretary of the interior is Herr Del- 
briick; of finance, Herr Wermuth; of justice, 
Herr Lisco; of the navy, von Tirpitz, who was 
recently ennobled; the postmaster is Herr 
Kraetke. Not one of these officials of the empire 
is of the old nobility! 

Of the 11 ministers of the kingdom of Prussia, 
the minister for agriculture, von Schorlemer; for 
war, von Heeringen; for education, von Trott 
zu Solz; and for the interior, von Dallwitz, are 
of the old nobility; but the other 7 ministers 
are not. Of the 12 Oberprdsidenten, men who 
rule the provinces, 6 are noblemen; of the 37 
Regierungsprdsidenten, 14 are of the nobility, 
23 are not. This should dispose finally of the 



THE GERMAN ARMY 451 

frequently heard assertion that Germany and 
Prussia are ruled by a small group of the landed 
nobility and that there is no way open to the 
talents. It is fair to say that a very small and 
intimate court group do have a certain influence 
in naming the candidates for these posts, but 
they are too wily to keep these positions for 
themselves. 

I suppose we all like, in a childish way, to wear 
placards of our prowess in the form of orders 
and decorations, but the evening attire of this 
bureaucratic nobility often looks as though there 
had been a ceramic eruption, a sort of measles 
of decorations. Men's breasts are covered with 
medals, stars, porcelain plaques, and their necks 
are hung with ribbons with a dangling medallion, 
all distributed from the patriarchal imperial 
Christmas-tree for every conceivable service from 
cleaning the streets to preaching properly on the 
imperial yacht. Men collect them as they would 
stamps or butterflies, and some of them must be 
very expert. 

The officers and the officials who are recog- 
nized as giving their services as a family tra- 
dition, as a patriotic service, or out of sheer love 
of the profession of arms, are rather liked than 
disliked, and give a tone and set a standard for 
all the rest. Both these officers and their men 



452 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

are respected. Of no German soldier could it be 
written : 

"I went into a theatre as sober as could be. 
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me; 
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls. 
But when it comes to fightin'. Lord! they'll shove me in the 
stalls." 

On the contrary, every effort is made to keep the 
army pleased with itself and proud of itself. 
The chancellor of the empire is always given 
military rank; officers are not allowed to marry 
unless they have, or acquire by marriage, a suit- 
able income; the dignity of the officer is upheld 
and his pride catered to ; officers are made to feel 
that they are the darlings of the Fatherland by 
everybody from the Emperor down. 

This artificial stimulant goes far to keep them 
contented, and the fact that the scale of comfort- 
able living in Germany was twenty years ago far 
below, and is even now not equal to, that of the 
equivalent classes with us makes the task easier. 
They have not been taught to want the things 
we want, and are still satisfied with less. And 
back of and behind it all is the feeling among the 
leaders, that the army furnishes no small amount 
of the patriotic cement necessary to hold Ger- 
many together. Ulysses lashed himself to the 
mast as he passed the sirens of luxury and lei- 



THE GERMAN ARMY 453 

sure, and for the German Ulysses the army sup- 
pHes the cords. It is not the foreign student of 
German hfe alone who notices that the Germans, 
even now, seem to be tribal rather than national. 
The best friends of Germany in Germany also 
recognize this weakness, comment upon it, and 
favor every possible expedient to overcome it. 

I admit frankly my admiration for this Spar- 
tan three quarters of a million of soldiers and 
sailors, and their officers. It offers a splendid 
example of patriotism, of disregard for the weak- 
ening comforts, luxuries, and fussy pleasures that 
absorb too much of our vitality; and of disdain 
for the material successes, which in their selfish 
rivalry, breed the very industrial distresses which 
are now our problems. At least here is a large 
professional body whose aims, whose way of 
living, and whose earnings prove that there can 
be a social hierarchy not dependent upon money. 
It is one of the finest lessons Germany has to 
teach, and long may she teach it. 

That is distinctly the side of the army that I 
know and approve without reserve. Of its value 
as a fighting force it would be ridiculous, in my 
case, to write. I have read and heard scores of 
criticisms and comments from many sources, and 
they range from those who claim that the Ger- 
man army is unbeatable, even if attacked from 



454 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

all sides, to those who maintain that it is already 
stale and mechanical. 

The war of 1866, when Prussia represented 
Germany, lasted thirty-five days; the war against 
Denmark lasted six months and twelve days; 
the war against France lasted six months and 
nine days. Thirty-six German cavalry regi- 
ments did not lose a man during the whole cam- 
paign of 1870-1871; and the Sixth Army Corps 
was hardly under fire. There has been no long, 
practical, and therefore decisive test of the army. 
Of the transport and commissary services during 
the French war, when Germany toward the end 
of it had 630,000 men in the field, certainly we, 
with the deplorable mismanagement and scan- 
dal of our Spanish war, and the British with 
the investigations after the Egyptian campaign 
fresh in memory, have nothing to say, except 
that it was wholly admirable and beyond the 
breath of suspicion of greed, thievery, or politi- 
cal chicanery. There was no rotten leather, and 
no poisoned beef. 

Officers, too, in the French war, were called 
upon to do their duty and to obey, and no indi- 
vidual brilliancy which interfered with the gen- 
eral plan was condoned or pardoned, no matter 
how highly placed the relatives or how influen- 
tial the connections of the offender. A distin- 



THE GERMAN ARMY 455 

guished general, after a successful and heroic 
victory, who had been tempted into a bloody 
battle against orders, was called before his supe- 
riors, told that the first lesson the soldier had to 
learn was obedience, and sent home! A brother 
of the chief of staff went into the war a captain 
and came back a captain! 

I am wondering what our underpaid, unno- 
ticed regulars in the army and navy would have 
to say, were they free to speak, of the conduct 
of our last martial escapade with Spain, by our 
press and by our politicians. There would be 
no stories of the German kind, I am sure, and no 
single record of an influential civilian who did 
not get all the glory that he deserved. My im- 
pulsive countrymen are always manufacturing 
heroes and saviors, but fortunately the crosses 
upon which they crucify them are erected almost 
as fast as the crowns are nicely fitted and com- 
fortable, so that there is little danger of per- 
manent tyranny. What Richelieu said of the 
French applies to some extent to ourselves: "Le 
propre du caractere frangais c'est que, ne se 
tenant pas fermement au bien, il ne s'attache 
non plus longtemps au mal." 

During and after the Franco-German war 
there was no cheap heroism, no feminine ex- 
citability producing litters of heroes ; no slobber- 



456 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing, oscillatory advertising; no press undertaking 
the duties of a general staff, which in our Spanish 
war almost completely clouded the real heroism 
and patriotism that were in evidence. There 
were no newspaper-made heroes, hastening back 
to exchange cheap military glory for votes and 
delicious notoriety. For all of which, gentle- 
men, let us thank God, and give praise where it 
is due. 

The army, too, is an interesting commentary 
upon the changes that are so rapidly taking place 
in Germany, from an agricultural to a manu- 
facturing nation. Of every 100 recruits that 
presented themselves there were passed as fit, in 
1902, for the First Army Corps, of those from the 
country 72.76; of those from the towns 63.88; 
in 1910 these figures had fallen to 67.24 and 53.66. 
In the Second x\rmy Corps the recruits passed as 
fit, from the towns, had fallen from 60.74 in 1902 
to 50.42 in 1910. In the Fifth Army Corps, of 
recruits from the towns the percentage of those 
passed fell from 60.07 to 46.13. In the Sixth 
Army Corps the percentage fell from 50.14 to 
43.83. In the Sixteenth Army Corps from 67.50 
to 58.80. In the Eighteenth Army Corps the 
recruits from the towns passed as fit had fallen 
from 60.46 in 1902 to 46.58 in 1910. The aver- 
age for the whole empire, of those from the towns 



THE GERMAN ARMY 457 

passed as fit, had fallen from 53.52 in 1902 to 
47.87 in 1910. The First Army Corps has its 
head-quarters at Konigsberg, and recruits from 
that neighborhood; the Second Army Corps has 
its head-quarters at Stettin, and recruits from 
Pomerania; the Fifth Army Corps has its head- 
quarters at Posen, and recruits from Posen and 
Lower Silesia; the Sixth Army Corps has its 
head-quarters at Breslau, and recruits from 
Silesia ; the Sixteenth Army Corps has its head- 
quarters at Metz, and recruits from Lorraine; 
the Eighteenth Army Corps has its head-quarters 
at Frankfurt-am-Main, and recruits from that 
neighborhood. These figures are enough to make 
my point, without giving the statistics for all 
the twenty-three corps, which is, that in spite of 
the precautions taken, the German recruit, espe- 
cially from the towns, in whatever part of the 
country, is losing vigor and stamina. 

Even this hard-and-fast arrangement of a 
bureaucratic government with a military back- 
bone does not solve all the problems. When one 
sees, however, the German school-boy, and the 
German recruit during the first weeks of his 
training, in the barracks and out, and I have 
watched thousands of them, and then looks 
over this same material after two or three years 
of training, it is hard to believe that they are the 



458 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

same, and that even these hard-working officers 
have been able to bring about such a change. 

Of the charges of brutaUty and severity I only 
know what the statistics tell me, that in an army 
of over 600,000 men there were some 500 cases 
brought to the notice of the superior officers last 
year. In 1911 there were 12,919 convictions for 
crimes and misdemeanors and 578 desertions. 
Of the 32,711 common soldiers in the Saxon 
army in 1911, 30 committed suicide; in 1909, 29; 
in 1905, 24; in 1901, 36; that is to say, roughly, 
one man per thousand. Of the why and where- 
fore I cannot say, but Saxony is a peculiarly 
overpopulated section of Germany, and the pop- 
ulation is overdriven; and the German every- 
where is a dreamy creature compared with us, 
of less toughness of fibre either morally or physi- 
cally, and no doubt, here and there, under-exer- 
cising and over-thinking make the world seem 
to be a mad place and impossible to live in. 
Indeed, it is no place to live in for the best of 
us if we take it, or ourselves, too seriously. 
The German army is an educated army, as is 
no other army in the world, and there are the 
diseases peculiar to education to combat. A 
mediocre ability to think, and a limited intel- 
lectual experience, coupled with a craving for 
miscellaneous reading, breed new microbes al- 



THE GERMAN ARMY 459 

most as fast as science discovers remedies for the 
old ones. 

Bismarck's words, " Ohne Armee kein Deutsch- 
land," meant to him, and mean to-day, far more 
than that the army is necessary for defence. It 
is the best all-round democratic university in the 
world; it is a necessary antidote for the physical 
lethargy of the German race; it is essential to 
discipline; it is a cement for holding Germany 
together; it gives a much-worried and many- 
times-beaten people confidence; the poverty of 
the great bulk of its officers keeps the level of 
social expenditure on a sensible scale; it offers 
a brilliant example, in a material age, of men 
scorning ease for the service of their country; it 
keeps the peace in Europe; and until there is a 
second coming, of a Christ of pity, and patience, 
and peace, it is as good a substitute for that far- 
off divine event as puzzled man has to offer. 

It is silly and superficial to look upon the Ger- 
man army only as a menace, only as a cloud of 
provocations in glittering uniforms, only as a 
helmeted frown with a turned-up moustache. 
It is not, and I make no such claim for it, an army 
or an officers' corps of Puritans or of self-sacrific- 
ing saints, but it does partake of the dreamy, 
idealistic German nature, as does every other 
institution in Germany. Though, as a whole. 



460 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

it is a fighting machine, the various parts of it 
are not imbued with that spirit alone. The un- 
easy pessimism of the dreamer, which distrusts 
the comfortable solutions of the business-like 
politicians, and leaders, in their own and in other 
countries, is as noticeable in the army as in all 
other departments of German life. 

"And all through, life I see a cross, 
Where sons of God yield up their breath; 
There is no gain except by loss, 
There is no life except by death. 
There is no vision but by faith; 
Nor glory but by bearing shame. 
Nor justice but by taking blame." 

There have oeen many, and there are still, 
soldiers who hold that creed. There are not a 
few of them in Germany. 



IX 

GERMAN PROBLEMS 

A GREAT nation like Germany must have 
characteristics, anxieties, problems, and 
responsibilities, some of which are pecul- 
iar to itself. The individual must be of small 
importance who has not problems and burdens 
of his own arising from his environment, position, 
work, and his personal relations with other men; 
as well as problems of temper, temperament, 
health, education, and traditions peculiar to 
himself. 

Wise men recognize two things about every 
other man: that he has his own problems, and 
that no one else thoroughly understands either 
another man's handicaps or his advantages; and 
that the only way to judge him is not to go be- 
hind the returns, but to note how he lives with 
these same problems. They are there, there is 
no doubt about that; the question is, does he 
smile or scowl .'^ does he work away toward a 
solution, or allow himself to be swamped by 
them.'' do they dominate him, or he them.^^ has 
he that sun of life, vitality, sufficient to burn 

461 



462 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

away the fog, or does he live and die in a moist, 
semi-impenetrable fog, in which he flounders 
timidly and rather aimlessly about, always 
rather discouraged, rather in the dark, and lam- 
entably damp in person and in spirits? The 
only fair test of a man's life is his living of it, 
and the same is true of a nation. 

Of Germany's history, traditions, and tem- 
perament I have written. No one can fail to 
note the chief characteristics: their gregarious- 
ness, their melancholic and subjective way of 
looking at life, their passion for music. It is 
more what they think, than what they do or 
see, that gives them pleasure. They agree with 
Erasmus, that "it is a foolish error to believe 
that happiness is dependent upon things; it is 
dependent entirely upon one's opinion of them." 
The indefinite has no terrors for them, they de- 
light indeed in the indefinable. They have done 
little in great sculpture and architecture, or the 
founding and ruling of colonies, as compared 
with their supreme achievements in music, in 
philosophy, in lyric poetry. 

The art of music, which moves one greatly 
toward nothing in particular; which supplies 
sounds but not a language for the mysteries of 
feeling; which easily carries a sensitive soul 
away from its sorrows or drowns it in tears, and 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 463 

all without offering a semblance of a practical 
solution; which orchestrates a greater fury, a 
more poignant jealousy, a sweeter note of bird, 
a harsher clang of weapons, than any human 
energy can even imagine to exist; this art with 
which marching soldiers sing away their fatigue, 
but not really; with which disconsolate lovers 
wing their hopes, but not really; with which the 
pious pipe themselves to heaven, but not really; 
with which, by strings and beaten skins, organ- 
pipes and blowing brass, an anaesthesia of ec- 
stasy is produced, leaving one only the weaker 
against the dourness and doggedness of the devil; 
with which men and women hymn themselves 
home to God, only to lose Him when they leave 
the threshold of His house; which choruses from 
a thousand throats patriotism, defiance, self- 
confidence, but arms none of them with any use- 
ful weapon; which with drums and brass can 
send any lout to heroism without his knowing 
why; this art which burns up the manhood of 
its devotees — who ever heard of a great tenor 
who was a great man, or even of a great musician 
for more than half of whose life one must needs 
not apologize? — this art flourishes in Germany 
not without reason, and not for nothing. 

In a ragged school in the neighborhood of 
Posen where the children could hardly speak 



464 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

German they could sing; in a public school in 
Charlottenburg fifty boys, aged between eight 
and fifteen, sang the part-song known to every 
college man in America, "On a Bank Two Roses 
Grew," as well as a college glee club; those 
who know Bayreuth, or have attended a musi- 
cal festival, or listened to one of the great clubs 
of male voices, or heard the orchestras and mili- 
tary bands, will not deny the delights of music 
in Germany. In Berlin there is not a hall suit- 
able for a musical recital that is not engaged a 
year, sometimes more, in advance. 

In the beautiful Golden Hall of the castle of 
the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, at 
Schwerin, I have attended a concert given by 
the Grand Duke's own orchestra, where the se- 
lections were all compositions of former leaders 
or members of the orchestra, dating back over a 
period of two hundred years. For centuries in 
this particular grand duchy music and the thea- 
tre, supported and guided by the sovereign, 
have offered a school of entertainment and in- 
struction to the people. At this present writ- 
ing, special trains are run to Schwerin from the 
surrounding country districts, and the people 
for miles around subscribe for their seats for the 
whole winter, and attend the theatre and cer- 
tain concerts as regularly as children go to 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 465 

school. It sounds oddly to the ears of an Ameri- 
can to hear criticism to the effect, that there are 
more high-class music and more classical plays 
than the people have either time or money for. 
Here is a population which is actually over- 
indulging in culture. We complain of too little; 
here they complain of too much. It makes one 
wonder whether any of the problems of social 
life are satisfactorily soluble; whether indeed it 
be not true that even the virtues carried to an 
extreme do not become vices. Philanthropy in 
more than one city in America is spending time, 
money, and energy to bring about this very 
enthusiasm for music and the more intellectual 
arts which, it is maintained, here in Schwerin at 
least, has gone too far. 

These problems are not so easy of solution as 
the ignorant and the inexperienced think. Im- 
agine the inhabitants of Hoboken, New Jersey; 
of Lynn, Massachusetts; of Kalamazoo, Mich- 
igan; of Bloody Gulch, Idaho, spending too 
much time and money listening to the music of 
Palestrina and Bach, or to the plays of Shake- 
speare; and yet what money and energy would 
not be spent by certain enthusiasts for the arts 
did they think such a result possible! And, 
after all, it might prove not a blessing, but a 
danger. 



466 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Whenever or wherever you are In the company 
of Germans you notice their pleasure and their 
keen interest in the subjective, rather than 
in the objective side of hfe. It is from within 
out that they are stirred, not as we are, by out- 
side things working upon us. They are still the 
dreaming, drinking, singing, impulsive Germans 
of Tacitus. Titus Livius, Plutarch, and Ma- 
chiavelli, all maintained that the successive in- 
vasions of the Germans into Italy were for the 
sake of the wine to be found there. Plutarch 
writes that "the Gauls were introduced to the 
Italian wine by a Tuscan named Arron, and so 
excited were they by the desire for more that, 
taking their wives and children with them, they 
journeyed across the Alps to conquer the land 
of such good vintages, looking upon other coun- 
tries as sterile and savage by comparison." 
Even if this be not history, it is an impression; 
and at any rate, from that day to this the Ger- 
mans have agreed with the dictum of Aulus 
Gellius: "Prandium autem abstemium, in quo 
nihil vini potatur, canium dicitur: quoniam 
canis vino caret." When the Roman historian 
first came into contact with them he notes, that 
their bread was lighter than other bread, because 
"they use the foam from their beer as yeast." 
Tacitus writes of them: "The Germans 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 467 

abound with rude strains of verse, the reciters 
of which, in the language of the country, are 
called 'Bards.'" 

I visited a private stable in Bavaria, as well 
ordered and as well kept as any private stable 
in America or in England, and the head coach- 
man was a reader of poetry; and though he had 
received numerous offers of higher wages in the 
city, declined them, giving as one reason that 
the view from the window of his room could not 
be equalled elsewhere! Where can one find a 
stable-man in our country who reads Shelley or 
Edgar Allan Poe, or who ever heard of Wil- 
liam James and Pragmatism? I may be doing 
an injustice to the stable-men of Boston, but I 
doubt it. 

There are scores of pages of notes to my hand, 
recounting similar if not such startling examples 
of the German temperament among high and 
low. Musical, melancholic, gregarious, subjec- 
tive, these are their true characteristics, but the 
superficial among us do not see these things be- 
cause they are hidden behind the great army, 
the new navy and mercantile marine, the fac- 
tories, the increased commercial values, the 
strenuous agricultural and industrial pushing 
ahead of the last thirty years. But they are 
there, they represent the German temperament, 



468 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

they are the internal character of Germania, 
always to be taken into account in judging her, 
or in wondering why she does this or that, or 
why she does it in this or that way. 

'*As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

This is what the purely subjective mind is ever 
doing, and when it is carried too far it is insan- 
ity. The individual no longer sees things as 
they are, but he sees others and himself in 
strange, horrible, or ludicrous shapes. 

Barring Japan, I suppose Germany yields 
more easily to the temptation of the subjective 
malady of suicide than any other country. In 
Saxony, for example, the rate was lately 39.2 per 
100,000 of the population, in England and Wales 
7.5. During the five years ending with 1908 
there were for every 100 suicides among males in 
the United States 136 in Germany, and for ev- 
ery 100 suicides of females 125 in Germany. In 
Vienna, and for racial purposes this is Germany, 
1,558 persons killed themselves in 1912. Chil- 
dren committing suicide because thej^ have failed 
in their examinations is not uncommon in Ger- 
many; in America and in England the teachers 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 469 

are more likely to succumb than the children. 
We do not commit suicide in America from any 
sense of shame at our intellectual shortcomings 
— what a decimating of the population there 
would be if we did ! — it is more apt to be caused 
by ill health consequent upon a straining chase 
for dollars. In Prussia during the five years, 
1902-1907, divorce increased from 17.7 to 20.8 
per 100,000 inhabitants, and suicide from 20 
to 30.7. 

If the observer does not take this difference of 
temperament into account, he does not realize 
how new and strange it is to find Germany these 
days, making its first and strongest impression 
upon the outsider by its industrial progress. 
The more intelligent men in Germany are be- 
ginning to see the dangers to real progress in 
such feverish devotion to industry, and to recog- 
nize that the life of the population is absorbed 
too largely by science, finance, and commerce. 
To see so much of the intelligence of the nation 
exercising itself in material researches, to see 
such undue fervor in calculations of self-inter- 
est, does not leave an enlivening impression. 
Such an ideal of life is paltry in itself and in- 
volves grave dangers in the future. It is a long 
stride in the wrong direction since Hegel wrote 
of Germany as "the guardian of the sacred fire of 
intellect." 



470 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Out of this temperament has grown the self- 
consciousness, the uneasy vanity, the "touchi- 
ness" which has made Germany of late years 
the despair of the diplomats all over the world. 
She has become a chameleon-like menace to 
peace everywhere in the world. What she 
wants, what will offend her dignity, when she 
will feel hurt, what amount of consideration will 
suffice, when she will change color to match a 
changed situation, and in what color she will 
choose to hide her plans or to make manifest 
her demands, no man knows. She will not see 
things as they are, but always as an exhalation 
from her own mind. As one of her own poets 
has written: "Deutschland ist Hamlet." 

At this present moment she does not see either 
England or America as they are, quite peaceably 
disposed toward her but she sees them, and per- 
sists in seeing them, as they would be were Ger- 
many in their place. She is forever looking into 
a mirror instead of through the open window. 
"The mailed fist," "the rattling of the sabre," 
"the friend in shining armor," ''querelle alle- 
mande,'" are all phrases born in Germany in the 
last thirty years. 

She even sees herself a little out of focus, and 
though I admit her precarious position in the 
heart of Europe, she exaggerates the necessity 
for her autocratic military government to meet 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 471 

the situation. That philosophical and literary 
radical Lord Morley, now wearing a coronet, 
in the land where logic is a foundling and com- 
promise a darling, writes: "A weak government 
throws power to something which usurps the 
name of public opinion, and public opinion as 
expressed by the ventriloquists of the news- 
papers is at once more capricious and more 
vociferous than it ever was." This, strange to 
say, is exactly the opinion of the German auto- 
crats, who maintain that no democracy can be a 
strong military power. It remains for England, 
and perhaps later America, to prove her wrong. 
The sovereign lady Germania, being of this 
temper and disposition, of this psychological 
make-up, let us look at her dealings with cer- 
tain embarrassing problems in her own house- 
hold. The over-stimulation of ill-regulated 
mental activity as the result of regimental edu- 
cation is one of the minor problems. Some four- 
teen million dollars worth of cheap and nasty 
literature is peddled by the agents of certain 
publishing houses, and sold all over Germany to 
those recently taught to read but not trained to 
think; and this, it is to be remembered, is still 
a land of low wages, of strict economies, and of 
small expenditures on books. For Germany that 
is an enormous sum and represents a very wide- 



472 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

spread evil. I recognize that it is not only in 
Germany, but in France, England, and Amer- 
ica, that the ethically hysterical have assumed 
that modesty and health and common-sense are 
characteristics of the intellectually mediocre. 
That the neglect of all, and the breaking of some, 
of the Ten Commandments is essential to the 
creation of art or literature, or necessary to a 
courageous freedom of living, is a contention 
with which I agree less and less the more I know 
of art, literature, and life. But, as I have re- 
marked elsewhere in this volume, the Strind- 
bergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their 
day in Germany just now, and beneath this 
again is this large distribution of the lawless and 
sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch 
for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the 
coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote 
that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine 
de I'ame." 

There is but a puny barrier against this, for 
the statistical year-book of German cities gives 
the number of public libraries in forty -two cities 
as 179. Twenty-seven of these cities gave an 
annual support to 114 of these libraries of only 
$64,847! According to the figures of Herr 
Ernest Schultze, in 1907 the forty largest Ger- 
man cities, with a population of 11,380,000, had 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 473 

public libraries containing a sum total of 807,- 
000 volumes. In the year 1906-1907, 5,437,000 
volumes were taken out and 1,607,476 persons 
frequented the public reading-rooms, and in these 
forty-two cities $280,095 were contributed from 
private sources for such library purposes. In 
1910 Germany had in some 400 cities, each of 
more than 10,000 inhabitants, about 650 public 
libraries and reading-rooms, with together about 
3,250,000 volumes. 

Berlin has thirty public libraries with 231,300 
volumes; the number of books taken out in 1910 
was 1,655,000. Hamburg has one public li- 
brary with 100,000 volumes, of which 1,364,000 
were taken out. Breslau has 7 libraries and 4 
reading-rooms, with 75,578 volumes. Leipzig 
has 7 libraries and 3 reading-rooms, with 42,100 
volumes. Munich has 6 libraries and 26,671 
volumes. Cologne has 7 libraries and 6 reading- 
rooms, with 24,898 volumes. 

The smallest library is in the village commu- 
nity of Dudweiler, in the Rhine province, which 
contains 132 volumes for the 22,000 inhabitants. 

There were 14,941 books published in Ger- 
many in 1880, 18,875 in 1890, 24,792 in 1900, 
and 31,281 in 1910. 

There were 13,470 books published in America 
in 1910, 9,209 of them by American authors. 



474 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

There were 10,914 books published in Eng- 
land in 1911, of which 2,384 were new editions. 
Of this number 2,215, which includes 933 new 
editions and 40 translations, were fiction; re- 
ligion, 930; sociology, 725; science, 650; geog- 
raphy, 601; biography, 476; history, 429; tech- 
nology, 525. In 1820, there were only 26 novels 
published in England. 

Of the 31,281 books published in Germany in 
1910, 4,852 dealt with education and juvenile lit- 
erature; 4,134, belles-lettres; 3,215, law and polit- 
ical economy; 2,510, theology; 2,082, commerce 
and industry; 1,981, medicine; 1,884, philology 
and literary history; 1,480, geography, includ- 
ing maps; 667, military science and equestrj^; 
1,030, agriculture and forestry; 1,750, natural 
science and mathematics; 1,108, engineering 
and construction; 1,254, history and biography; 
981, art; and 668 on philosophy and theosophy. 

There were some 9,000 writers of books in 
America in 1910, or one author in 10,000 of the 
population, already more than enough; there 
were some 8,000 in Great Britain, or one author 
in about 5,500 of the population; while in Ger- 
many there are over 31,000 writers, or one author 
in every 2,097 of the population, including men, 
women, and children of all ages, an unreason- 
able and disastrous proportion. If we estimate 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 475 

the number of adult males of Germany at 14,000,- 
000, the number who voted at the last election, 
then there was one author to every 450, a most 
unhealthy proportion, and bearing out exactly 
what has been said of the German temperament 
and constitutional bias. Furthermore, this ac- 
counts for the fact that Germany imports some 
.JJIQ^OOO agrjcultural laborers each year to garner 
the food harvests, for which she has not sufficient 
recruits, and who, by the way, take out of the 
country each year some $35,000,000 in wages. 
Twenty per cent, of the miners in Westphalia 
are foreigners, eight per cent, of them Italians, 
and there are nearly half a million foreigners 
employed as common laborers in the various in- 
dustries of Germany. 

Wherever one travels now in the world, he 
finds that most courageous and self-sacrificing 
of all the pioneers, the missionary: American, 
British, French, Italian. The best of them, on 
the plains of North America, in the destructive 
climate of India, in China, in all the islands of all 
the seas, are, whatever their creed, soldiers of 
whom we are all proud; for they fight not only 
against the overwhelming prejudice of those 
whom they seek to save, but against the wide- 
spread prejudice of their own people, and against 
the well-founded suspicion and contempt aroused 



476 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

by their own black sheep. I have found them, 
here a Jesuit, there a Presbyterian, winning my 
friendship and my admiration, despite funda- 
mental differences of belief about many things. 
There are few Germans among them! Even 
in this field Germany produces theological 
controversialists whom we have all studied, 
orthodox and destructive, but few pioneers, 
and practically no Augustines or Loyolas, Wes- 
leys or Booths, Livingstones or Stanley^. Co- 
lumba, an Irish refugee, founded on the island 
of lona, off the west coast of Scotland, a 
mission station, whence went missionaries and 
preachers to the conversion not only of England, 
but of the tribes of Germany. It was only in 
the sixth century that the Franks, only in the 
ninth century that the Saxons, and only in the 
tenth century that the Danes became Christians. 

Neither at home nor abroad are her successes 
those which deal with men by winning their 
allegiance, their submission, their loyalty, or 
their respectful regard. She is pre-eminent in 
the things of the mind, in subjective matters, 
and in her regimental dealings with, and ar- 
rangements for, the inanimate side of life. 

As an example on the credit side of her govern- 
ing is the very complete and successful system 
of land-banks, introduced by Frederick the 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 477 

Great and since modelled somewhat upon the 
French methods, which have protected the 
farmer from usury, insured him money at low 
rates for improvements, for the purchase of tools, 
cattle, and fertilizers, and enabled him to do, by 
sensible co-operation, what would have been im- 
possible for him as an individual. So successful 
has been this co-operation between the banks 
and the united farming communities that it 
were well worth a chapter of description were 
it not that, through the initiative of President 
Taft and the able and industrious assistance of 
our officials in Europe, among whom our am- 
bassador in Paris, Mr. Herrick, may be men- 
tioned as untiring, there will shortly appear a 
complete exposition and explanation of the 
scheme, available for those of my countrymen 
interested in the matter. Or if they will journey 
to Ireland they may see there what Sir Horace 
Plunkett has done to revolutionize, and against 
tremendous odds, agriculture. And, be it noted, 
it has been done, with emphatic warnings 
against the modern fallacy of leaning upon state 
aid. It is estimated that our farmers would 
be saved between $20,000,000 and $40,000,- 
000 a year in interest alone were we to adopt 
similar methods of loaning to the land-owners. 
The Preussische Centralgenossenschaftskasse, or 



478 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Central Bank of Co-operative Associations, has 
revolutionized, one may here use the word with- 
out exaggeration, agricultural methods, through- 
out Prussia and Germany. 

In Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa there are 
5,000,000 acres of land in wheat, which is prac- 
tically the size of Germany's wheat acreage, but 
Germany produces 140,000,000 bushels of wheat 
off her parcel of land; while the wheat raised 
on the same area in these three States is only 
55,000,000 bushels. 

France and Minnesota each plant 16,000,000 
acres in wheat, but France produces 324,000,000 
bushels and Minnesota 188,000,000 bushels. In 
round numbers we support 90,000,000 people 
on 3,000,000 square miles of land, and we could 
support 150 per square mile just as easily as 30, 
and even then there would be not even a frac- 
tion of the density of population of Denmark, 
178; the Netherlands, 470; France, 189; Saxony, 
830; England and Wales, 405.6. The average 
wheat yield of our country is about 14 bushels 
per acre in good years, it might just as well 
be 25; the average cotton yield is about four- 
tenths of a bale per acre, and four times that 
amount could be raised as easily. 

In 1900, 10,500,000 people were engaged in 
agriculture in America, or 35.7 per cent, of the 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 479 

population; as over against 37.7 in 1890 and 
44.3 in 1880. Of these 10,500,000, 5,700,000 
were owners, renters, or overseers, or 56 per 
cent., and only 4,500,000 were actual farm la- 
borers; and more than half of these, or 2,350,000, 
were members of the family, leaving only some 
2,000,000 actual agricultural wage-earners, or 
employable agricultural laborers. Five-eighths 
of these were under twenty-five years of age, 
and of the white regular workers only one-tenth 
were over thirty-five years of age. This shows 
how unstable is the foundation of our agricult- 
ural prosperity, the chief asset of plenty and 
contentment of our country. Mr. Get-Rich- 
Quick has moved on to the shifting and more 
exciting opportunities of the cities, where poor 
human nature, aided and abetted by weak phi- 
lanthropy, and demagogic fishing for votes by 
eleemosynary legislation, provides him with a 
mild form of riotous living, and a fatted calf of 
doles in case of accident, sickness, penury, or 
old age. 

In our American cities of over 8,000 inhabi- 
tants the increase in population from 1790 to 
1900 has been from 3.4 per cent, to 33 per cent. 
In cities of 2,500 and over the increase from 
1880 to 1900 has been from 29.3 per cent, to 
40.2 per cent. In the State of New York the 
farming population is smaller than ever before. 



480 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and in parts of New England it is smaller than 
one hundred years ago. In 1909 there were 
15,000 deserted farms with a total of 1,130,000 
acres. The average size of farms in the United 
States in 1850 was 212 acres; in 1890, 121 acres. 
Wages in the reaping season on fruit, grain, and 
cotton farms are enormous, running to four and 
five dollars a day. We are behind every coun- 
try in Europe except Russia, in our agricultural 
methods. Some day the American people will 
discover, may it not be too late, that the tall 
talk and highfalutin boastings of the politicians 
and alien journalists in their midst do nothing 
to make two blades of grass grow where one grew 
before. 

Germany may not have solved this problem, 
indeed no nation which offers undue legislative 
alleviation for human frailty will ever solve it, 
but at least she has not shirked the problem, 
and presents for our enlightenment a scheme in 
full and smooth working order. 

In dealing with German problems it is fair 
to give examples where her methods have been 
wholly and entirely successful. The man who 
does not know one tree or shrub from another 
cannot travel in trains, motor-cars, or afoot 
without remarking the neatness, symmetry, and 
the flourishing condition of the forests. In 
these matters Germany so far surpasses us that 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 481 

we may be said to be merely in a kindergarten 
stage of development. As early as 1783 a Ger- 
man traveller, Johann David Schoepf, was dis- 
tressed to see the waste of valuable wood in 
America. He tells of a furnace in New Jersey 
which exhausted a forest of nearly 20,000 acres 
in twelve to fifteen years, and goes on to proph- 
esy the grave danger to America unless coal is 
discovered and used instead of wood. 

The public forests in America contain about 
nine per cent, of the total land area and about 
twenty -five per cent, of the forest area of the 
country. In Germany the state owns about 
40 per cent, of the forests, and nearly 70 per cent, 
of the forest area is under state control. The 
total forest area of the empire is 34,569,800 
acres, and two-thirds bear pine, larch, and red 
and white fir. In a recent year the Federal 
States made a net profit of $38,250,000 from 
public lands and forests, and the entire profit 
from the German forests was estimated at $110,- 
000,000. When one remembers that Germany 
is less than the size of Texas, and that from her 
forests alone, in one year, she received an income 
equal to more than one-tenth of our total na- 
tional expenditure for that same year, the fact 
of our childish wastefulness is brought home to 
us, and makes a patriot feel that a Gifford 
Pinchot should be given a free hand. I can 



482 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

only write of the subject as one technically 
entirely ignorant, but that Germany is a uni- 
versity of forestry is not only attested by the 
demand for her teachers in India, and in Amer- 
ica, and elsewhere in the world, but by the con- 
dition of the forests themselves all over Ger- 
many, which no traveller, from America at any 
rate, can fail to notice without surprise and 
delight. 

Germany, like the rest of us, has been obliged 
to face the various social problems that arise 
from original sin, but which vote-getters are 
pleased to ascribe to industrial progress. In 
our country, with a population of some thirty 
to the square mile, while in the kingdom of 
Saxony the density of the population is 830.6 to 
the square mile, it is hard to believe that we 
suffer from overcrowding so much as from over- 
indulgence, wastefulness, and fussy legislation. 
None the less, we have 42 institutions for the 
feeble-minded, 115 schools and homes for the 
deaf and blind, 350 hospitals for the insane, 
1,200 refuge houses, 1,300 prisons, 1,500 hos- 
pitals, and 2,500 almshouses. We have 2,000,- 
000 annually who are cared for in homes and 
hospitals, 300,000 insane and feeble-minded, 
160,000 blind or deaf, 80,000 prisoners, and 100,- 
000 paupers in almshouses and out, and we 
spend each year about $100,000,000 in taking 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 483 

care of them. We are as wasteful and careless 
in these matters as we have been until very 
lately in our forestry methods. 

In the early days of the empire Germany 
undertook to deal with these social problems. 
The German Empire took over some of the prin- 
ciples of socialism, but retained, and retains ab- 
solutely, the power of applying those principles. 
Bismarck himself admitted that his advocacy of 
the industrial insurance laws was selfish. "My 
idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I 
say to win them over, to regard the state as a 
social institution existing for their sake and in- 
terested in their welfare." Whatever else may 
have resulted, discontent, whether well-founded 
or not, is not now under discussion, has not been 
lessened. In 1912 more than one-half of the 
electors voted "discontented" as over against 
the less than one-half who voted "contented." 
The mass of the people may be better clothed, 
better fed, better housed, better cared for in 
sickness and in old age, than formerly, but they 
are not satisfied. No state can go much fur- 
ther than Germany has gone along the lines of 
state interference, guidance, and control of the 
personal affairs of its people, and nothing is more 
surprising about the whole matter than the gen- 
eral acceptance in America and in England of 
such legislation as having proved altogether 



484 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

successful. I doubt if any intelligent German 
considers these various pension schemes as alto- 
gether successful. I can vouch for it that many 
German statesmen make no such claims in pri- 
vate, whatever they may say in public. 

Some of the barren figures, needing no com- 
ment, are of interest in this connection. The 
cost of insurance in Germany has risen to over 
$500,000 a day, the total cost of state insurance 
exceeding $250,000,000 a year at the present 
time, a fairly heavy tax upon small employers. 
In 1909, of 422,076 decisions by the industrial 
unions, 76,352 were appealed against, and of the 
100,000 arbitration judgments, 22,794 were ap- 
pealed against. So difficult is it to settle to 
the claimant's satisfaction the amount of salve 
necessary for his particular wound when, as is 
true in these cases, the salve is a grant of money 
for a longer or shorter period! 

In 1886 there were, roughly, 100,000 accidents 
reported and 10,000 compensated, but as they 
became more thoroughly acquainted with the 
game, the figures rose in 1908 to 662,321 acci- 
dents and 142,965 compensations. 

The vast increase of the claims for trifling 
injuries is shown by the fact that in twenty 
years from 1888 to 1908, despite the increase of 
the total compensation from $1,475,000 to $38,- 
715,000, the average compensation per accident 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 485 

fell from $58.50 to $38.83. In the two years 1907 
to 1909 the number of members of those state- 
insured increased by 380,819, while the days 
of sickness increased by 26,219,632! The cost of 
sickness insurance alone rose from $42,895,000 
in 1900 to $83,640,000 in 1909. The Workmen's 
Compensation Act in England costs, for man- 
agement, commission, legal and medical fees, 
$20,000,000 a year, while the compensation paid 
out was $13,500,000. The insurance companies 
calculate that for every $500 of compensation, 
the employers have paid $750 ! 

It is becoming increasingly evident that the 
logical result of state charity, or call it state 
insurance to avoid controversy, over a large 
field, and including millions of beneficiaries and 
claimants, is that the army of officials, the 
expenses of administration, and the payments 
themselves must sooner or later break the back 
of the state morally, politically, and financially. 
It rapidly increases parasitism among the re- 
ceivers; makes a powerful though indifferent 
army of state servants of the distributers; and 
loses financially to the state far more in expense 
of administration, and loss of useful labor of 
the army of civil servants, than it gains by the 
loss to the state of individual incapacity re- 
sulting in pauperism and invalidism, which 
must be cared for. To put it briefly, it is far 



486 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

more dangerous to the state to tell the individ- 
ual that he shall be taken care of than to tell 
him that he must shift for himself. As for the 
effect upon the individual, it is a lowering medi- 
cine, making the patient gradually dependent 
upon the drug, and bringing him finally to the 
incurable invalidism of surly apathy. To change 
Patrick Henry's fiery peroration slightly: Give 
me liberty or in the end you give me moral and 
political death. 

Students of the various forms of this modern 
political nostrum, of getting rid of the fools who 
are rich by deceiving the fools who are poor, will 
remember the decree of the Provisional Govern- 
ment of the French Republic in 1848: "This 
Government undertakes to guarantee the exist- 
ence of the workman by work. It undertakes 
to guarantee work to every citizen." On 
March 9 public works were started and 3,000 
men employed. March 15 saw 14,000 on the 
pay-rolls, most of them unoccupied because there 
was no suitable work. Those not working re- 
ceived "inactivity pay" of a franc a day. The 
end of April saw 100,000 on the pay-rolls. In 
May a minister ventured to suggest that it was 
the workman's duty to work! There were mur- 
murs of disapproval, but the public treasury 
was nearing bankruptcy, and on June 22 an 
order was promulgated, that all of these work- 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 487 

men between the ages of seventeen and twenty- 
five were to enlist in the army. An insurrec- 
tion followed this order that workmen should 
work, and 3,000 citizens were shot down in the 
streets, and another 3,000 were sent to penal 
colonies in Algeria. The French are a logical 
people. The state promised suitable work; that 
always means, from the point of view of the 
worker, agreeable work, and not too fatiguing at 
that. Of course, no such thing is possible, and 
the end was riot, murder, and penal servitude. 
The state can no more provide suitable and 
agreeable methods of livelihood for its citizens, 
than it can provide them with a duty-loving, 
unenvious, and honest disposition. As I have 
remarked elsewhere, the only thing that stands 
between state socialism and the instant solution 
of all our social problems is human nature! 
This mongrel demand for an artificial equality, 
is worse, because more degrading than any 
tyranny of church or state even. Every man 
wants superiority and distinction for himself, 
he only wants equality, invisibility, and inarticu- 
lateness for others. 

When some such system as this is put to work 
in Ireland, I shall envy every physician in Ire- 
land, for he will live in a joyous round of farces 
such as the world has never provided before for 
the lovers of the humorous. Already Ireland, 



488 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

with only 701,620 electors, out of a total of 
8,058,025 in the United Kingdom, is represented 
in the House of Commons by 103 members out 
of the total of 670; and out of the 935,000 old- 
age pensioners on the lists at the beginning of 
1912, Ireland had 202,810, and was drawing 
$12,943,000 out of the total paid of $59,445,500, 
while the total population of Ireland was 4,368,- 
599, and of the rest of the United Kingdom 
40,533,557 ! Further, as an example of the slight 
value of education in the game of politics, out 
of the 41,710 illiterate voters in the United 
Kingdom, Ireland has 22,515. Long life to Ire- 
land for her gallant attack upon humbuggery 
with humbuggery! And this is, too, the little 
island that sent the Wellesleys, the Pallisers, 
the Moores, the Eyres, the Cootes, the Napiers, 
the Wolseleys, and Roberts to fight England's 
battles, and half the officers and privates who 
conquered India; which in the Seven Years' War 
furnished Austria with her best generals (Brown, 
Lacy, O'Donnell), and whose exiles, called the 
" Wild Geese," flocked to the standard of Wash- 
ington in 1776. This is proof positive that they 
are not naturally a parasitic race. 

Even in Germany, where there is not a tithe 
of the impish humour that exists in Ireland, the 
Socialists have so misused the immense bureau- 
cracy that must carry on the mere clerical work 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 489 

of insurance, that a new law passed the Reichs- 
tag in June, 1911, containing several hundred 
amendments. Employers must now pay one- 
half instead of one-third of the sickness insurance 
premiums, which gives them one-half instead 
of one-third of the management authority. 

The management had degenerated into a mere 
game of politics, with the Socialists in such dis- 
proportionate control that they were rapidly 
turning the insurance machinery into a well- 
organized body for the exploitation of their own 
political doctrines; and the employer and the 
state were helpless. It is, therefore, amusing 
to the man on the spot to find certain English 
writers offering as proof of the success of the 
insurance laws the fact that the Socialists, who 
once opposed, are now satisfied with them. Of 
course they are satisfied with them. They have 
had a war-chest and weapons put into their 
hands such as they have never had before. Nor 
have these detailed parchment solutions of so- 
cial questions done away with all the tramps, 
poor, sick, and destitute. Over a million per- 
sons passed through the municipal night shel- 
ters in Berlin during the last year; and there 
are still admittedly some 5,000 tramps in Ger- 
many. The vicious circle is in evidence in Ger- 
many as elsewhere. It might be possible to 



490 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

regulate men's earning power by legislation, but 
even when this colossal task is done, there must 
follow the regulation of the spending power to 
make it complete. What conceivable legislative 
regulation can efface the difference between 
what A, B, and C will get out of five dollars once 
they have them! That is the real problem, but 
no one proposes a solution of it. A will use his 
five dollars to make him more powerful, B will 
use his in dissipation, and C will lose his. How 
is that to be regulated.'' And without that regu- 
lation you will have rich men and tramps all 
over again. 

In urban and rural districts containing over 
10,000 inhabitants, some $40,000,000 was ex- 
pended for sick and poor relief, and this does 
not include the hundreds of districts with fewer 
than 10,000 inhabitants for which there are no 
figures. Even the wholly admirable Elberfeld 
system of charity, known all over the world to 
charity-workers, which is, briefly, investigation 
of cases by voluntary workers personally and 
privately, and each dealing with a small num- 
ber, has not solved the problem. There were 
1,537 strikes in Germany in 1909, and 2,109 in 
1910. In 1910, 8,269 industrial plants were af- 
fected, in which 372,119 persons were employed, 
and 2,209 plants were obliged to shut down 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 491 

entirely. There were as many as 154,093 persons 
on strike at the same time. In 1910 there were 
also 1,121 lock-outs, affecting 10,381 plants and 
314,988 persons. 

Here again, as in the case of the tempera- 
ment of the German people, one must look 
deeper than the average traveller has the time 
or the necessary experience back of him to do, 
in order to see and to sift the facts. Scores of 
travellers have told me: "I have never seen a 
tramp, a beggar, a drunken man in Germany." 
I can only reply that I have seen tramps at 
large, and colonies of them besides; that I have 
seen hundreds of the poverty-stricken and dis- 
eased; that there are more than thirty drunkards' 
homes in Germany; and that between 1879 and 
1901 the number of persons under treatment for 
alcoholism had increased from 12,000 to 65,000, 
an increase of 500 per cent.; the cases of heart 
disease and rheumatism increased by 600 per 
cent.; while the total population had increased 
33 per cent. There are 125,000 patients ad- 
mitted to the public and private lunatic asy- 
lums of Germany, and there are accommoda- 
tions in public and private hospitals for 1,300,000 
in-patients passing through them in the year; 
in 1909, 544,183 persons were tried before the 
courts of first instance and convicted, of whom 



492 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

49,697 were between twelve and eighteen years 
of age; and in the same year there were 183,700 
illegitimate births and 14,225 suicides, or 22.3 
per 100,000 of the population. The poor law 
authorities state that the cost to the empire of 
alcoholism in all its forms of poverty, crime, and 
disease amounts to some $13,000,000 a year. In 
1910 Germany consumed 1,704 million gallons 
of malt liquors, the United States, 1,851 million 
gallons; of beer we consumed 20.09 gallons and 
Germany 26.47 gallons per capita. Germany's 
drink bill even ten years ago was $560,000,000 
for beer, $140,000,000 for spirits, and $125,- 
000,000 for wdne. There is a wine, beer, or 
spirit dealer in Berlin for every 157 of the in- 
habitants, men, women, and children. It has 
always been the avowed policy of autocracies 
to atone for the lack of political freedom by lax 
regulations in regard to moral matters. The 
citizen is imprisoned for insulting the state, but 
he may insult his own person by dissipation up 
to any limit, this side of disorderliness in public. 
Drinking, gambling, and other forms of vice are 
provided for the citizens of Berlin comfortably 
and, comparatively speaking, cheaply. Lotter- 
ies are sanctioned by all the states, and they use 
this incentive to the worst form of gambling 
for all sorts of purposes, from repairing churches 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 493 

to building patriotic monuments, and replenish- 
ing the treasury. 

This is by no means an attack upon Germany 
or upon German methods in these matters; 
probably both in America and in England we 
are worse off in these respects than are they, but 
unprejudiced people will agree that it is high 
time to learn that not even German methods 
have solved these complicated and heatedly 
argued questions of social reform. Germany, 
due to its compactness and well-drilled and sub- 
servient population, should succeed if any na- 
tion can, for social legislation has never been 
in stronger or wiser hands or more admirably 
and honestly administered. In America such 
opportunities offered to the on-politics-living big 
and little bosses would lead swiftly to anarchy. 
We have laws enough now, but the baser poli- 
ticians protect our city tramps, our gunmen, our 
decadents, our incendiaries against our elected 
magistrates, in order that they may keep ready 
to hand, and increase, the raw material of a pur- 
chasable vote, by the domination and protection 
of which they keep themselves in power. That 
is the whole secret of our municipal misgovern- 
ment wherever it exists, and also the reason for 
our barbarous crimes. We have a cowed mag- 
istracy seeking re-election from the manipulat- 
ors of the purchasable voters. 



494 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The truth is that the Saccuhna method of 
social reform is nowhere a success, certainly not 
in Germany. The Sacculina is a crustacean. 
It attaches itself in the form of a simple sac to 
the crab, into which its blood-vessels extend. It 
loses its power of locomotion and its limbs dis- 
appear. It lives at the expense of the crab; 
activity is not necessary, and it becomes the 
highest type of parasite, with no organs except 
ovaries and blood-vessels. It can propagate, 
but has lost all power or desire to do anything 
else. We have succeeded in producing no small 
number of people of the Sacculina type by play- 
ing social and political crab for them, and we 
are on the way to produce more, until the crab 
is exhausted and the Sacculina is shaken into 
the water to sink or swim for himself. "Char- 
ity causes half the suffering she relieves, but 
she can never relieve half the suffering she 
causes." 

Compulsory insurance was tried in the prac- 
tical and economical Swiss city of Basle and 
given up, because it was found that each year it 
was the same small class who reaped the benefit 
of the insurance. The crab gained nothing and 
the Sacculina became rapidly impotent. Basle, 
if I mistake not, will have imitators, inclined to 
the philosophy of Frederick the Great, who was 
surely no enemy to rational progress, but who 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 495 

once said: "Depuis bien longtemps je suis con- 
vaincu qu'un mal qui reste vaut mieux qu'un 
bien qui change." 

A good deal of modern legislation is due to 
fatigue, and some of the rest to ill-founded ap- 
prehension, that unless there is a change of some 
kind the masters of the legislators will dis- 
charge them, because they do not furnish enough 
novelties. In the meantime nobody is bold 
enough to proclaim to the restless ones, seeking 
ever some new thing, that there is nothing orig- 
inal except what has been forgotten. The orig- 
inality of such students of history, and panderers 
to majorities, as the leaders of the discontented 
in England, Germany and in America, dates 
back to about the time of the fall of Pericles and 
the Athenian republic. 

The cry of "discontent" has become a fe- 
tich among unthinking politicians. We are all, 
thank God, discontented, and a poor lot we 
should be if we were not. The workingman's 
discontent has been over-emphasized, for the 
reason that what he demands is material, pon- 
derable, for sale, easy to see, and not far out of 
the reach of one's hand. He wants more rooms, 
more meat, more tobacco, more beer, more lei- 
sure. I am glad he does want them, and let me 
say just once, in answer to my detractors along 



496 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

these lines, that the workingman has no heartier 
champion than am I. I applaud his discontent 
just as I cherish my own, for "it is precisely this 
that keeps us all alive!" It is just because I 
wish him well that every ounce of my influence 
and experience are his, to open his eyes to the 
demagogues who fatten upon him, fool him, 
rope him, throw him and brand him, as they 
have done in Germany, as they are attempting 
to do in England, and as they will shortly begin 
to do in America. State socialism means slavery 
for him, with an army of officials living on him. 
He will be given so much bread, and beer, and 
meat, and tobacco ; so much music, theatre, and 
literature; and there will grow up an army 
whose business it will be to keep him in order, 
and to cut him down if he revolts, as was done 
by the police in one of the suburbs of Berlin not 
long ago. The German workman is already so 
entangled in the ropes of insurance, so harried 
by petty officials, so branded by the police, and 
he has permitted to increase such a host of guar- 
dians, that revolt or revolution is practically im- 
possible. Counting the army, navy, and offi- 
cials, there are said to be three million officials, 
great and small in Germany; and there are four- 
teen million electors, or, roughly, one policeman 
to every five adults. And those three million 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 497 

policemen, armed with lethal and legal weapons, 
are inflexibly and unalterably for no change. 
Does the workingman ever stop to think that 
those officials draw salaries amounting to some- 
thing like $1,200,000,000 a year, and is he still 
fool enough to think that he does not pay those 
salaries to these slave-drivers ! I have said that 
the population is well fed, well clothed, and well 
looked after. Of course they are. No slave- 
owner so maltreats his slaves that they cannot 
work for him! But is man fed by bread alone, 
even in the sugared form of music and the- 
atricals,'^ 

If the socialist Pygmalion ever succeeds in 
bringing his statue to life, how she will scorn 
him, hate his suffocating environment, wish for 
the wealth and softness he cannot give, desert 
him, begging to return to her marble tomb 
again. 

Long life to discontent, say I; but is the 
workingman such a fool that his eyes are not 
opened when a man of Bismarck's way of think- 
ing, when an autocrat like the Emperor have 
favored state socialism! Does he not see that 
socialism is the neatest hangman of them all 
to strangle his discontent! Does he not see 
the demagogue gradually assuming the features 
and the powers of the tyrant! Tyranny is not 



498 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

alone the prerogative of an aristocracy. "It is 
the place of a court to make its servants insig- 
nificant. If the people should fall into the same 
humor, and should choose their servants on 
the same principles of mere obsequiousness and 
flexibility, and total vacancy and indifference 
of opinion in all public matters, then no party 
of the state will be sound, and it will be vain to 
think of saving it." Thus writes Burke, the 
champion of our American revolt against his 
own country. The electors, now so flattered by 
the smooth phrases of their tyrants disguised 
as liberators, will one day be aghast to find 
themselves in a veritable house of correction 
paid for from their own savings. They will 
have learnt then, at last, that you cannot get 
rid of the fools who are rich by deceiving the 
fools who are poor; and corporalism will be 
found to be a harsher, fussier, a more meddle- 
some and a more indifferent tyrant than even 
feudalism. 

Even at the Krupp works at Essen, and the 
various branches elsewhere, where there is the 
most elaborate combination of Lady Bountiful 
and successful business anywhere in the world, 
men are not satisfied. If they are not contented 
there, then nowhere in this world will the work- 
ingman be contented. The Krupp business 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 499 

employs some 70,000 persons. In the partic- 
ular Essen works, for a hundred years, there 
has never been a strike, though others of their 
employees elsewhere have used the strike. 
Though the Cadburys and Levers and Taylors, 
in England, the Armours, the United States Steel 
Corporation, the National Cash Register Com- 
pany, the Procter and Gamble Company, the 
General Electric Company, and others in Amer- 
ica, and the famous and successful adoption of 
co-operation in Monsieur Godin's iron foundry 
at Guise, in France, have worked along the hues 
of recognition of their workmen's right to partici- 
pate in the profits, there is nothing on such an 
elaborate scale as at Essen, under the regime of 
the Krupps. 

From 1904 to 1910 the Krupps spent, for bene- 
ficial institutions of all kinds, $14,250,000, or 56 
per cent, of the dividends during that time. I 
have passed many hours at Essen, and seen 
thoroughly, from cellar to attic, this truly noble 
institution for the comfortable and safe guar- 
dianship of men, women, and children who are 
at the same time factors in a huge and success- 
ful industrial enterprise. There are schools, 
technical schools, hospitals, convalescent homes, 
a library with 71,000 volumes, theatre, orches- 
tra, band, lectures, concerts, pension and insur- 



500 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ance funds, lodgings for bachelors, tenements 
and dwellings for married people, separate cot- 
tages for widows and widowers too old for work, 
and every opportunity, with a high rate of inter- 
est, for saving. There is in existence a co-oper- 
ative store, as well managed as the co-operative 
stores at Tuxedo Park, and with much the same 
system of rebates. There are bathing facilities, 
gymnasium, a boat club, a system of providing 
hot meals from a central kitchen, reading-rooms 
and smoking-rooms. There is invested, not in- 
cluding the value of the land, which has risen 
enormously in value, over $12,500,000 in houses 
for the working-people, the return on the money 
being about 1% per cent. It would require 
volumes — indeed, two bulky volumes were issued 
last year by the company to celebrate the hun- 
dredth anniversary of the foundation of the 
Krupp works — to describe merely the machinery 
for making the people comfortable. 

In 1851 the Krupps exhibited at the exposition 
in London the first cannon made of cast steel; 
now they turn out more shells and shrapnel in 
a week than were used at the whole battle of 
Koniggratz (Sadowa), which lasted from eight 
o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the 
afternoon on July 3, 1866. The queen of this, 
the greatest factory of destructive agencies in 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 501 

the world, Is a gentle Madonna-faced lady who 
might well pose for a statue of peace, and whose 
loveliness is a mirror of the countless and un- 
tiring benefactions with which the people who 
work here are surrounded. Both the powers 
and the people of Germany may well be proud 
of the Krupps, for if sane beneficence were to be 
raised to the rank of statehood this great col- 
ony would well deserve the honor. The gross 
profits for the last year were $9,000,000, half 
of which was written off and the rest devoted 
to the reserve, to dividends, and to contribu- 
tions to the invalid and pension funds of the 
employees, which now amount to $9,500,000. 
The employees also have on deposit with the 
management $8,700,000. The contribution of 
the Krupps to the workmen's state-insurance 
fund amounted, in 1910, to $1,320,000. The 
Krupp family is rich, but what would their 
wealth have been had they practised the gob- 
bling and juggling financial methods of ; 

but I will not pillory my own countrymen by 
name, for, after all, our political methods have 
made them, and not they themselves. 

The German manufacturer has been at a dis- 
advantage, too, for several reasons, and this may 
well be noted as one of Germany's problems. 
She has not the deposits of coal that have made 



502 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

England rich, nor the wonderful soil of America, 
from which alone we take $9,000,000,000 every 
year, nor France's population, now at a stand- 
still, and which can feed itself off its own soil. 
She has been a large borrower of capital to 
finance her enormous expansion of industry and 
commerce, and, above all, the gold supply of the 
world, which in the last resort is the foundation 
of credit, is not in her hands, nor can it be so 
long as British and American fleets keep the 
ocean highways over which that gold travels. 

The world's gold output in 1911 was $493,- 
100,000; of this $177,600,000 came from the 
Transvaal; $100,350,000 from the United States; 
$63,600,000 from Austraha; $42,300,000 from 
Russia; $23,300,000 from Mexico; $35,600,000 
from Rhodesia, India, and Canada; and $15,- 
650,000 from Central and South America, or 
$458,000,000, of the total output of $493,100,000, 
from countries which in time of war would be 
unlikely to ship gold to Germany. More than 
one half the output comes from the British Em- 
pire alone. To those who are satisfied with the 
easy answer to the reason for the increased cost 
of living, that the output of gold has increased, 
it must be puzzling to learn that of the total out- 
put, in round numbers, of $500,000,000, $150,- 
000,000 is used in the arts and manufactures 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 503 

and $150,000,000 goes to India, where it is 
buried and hoarded, and $100,000,000 is re- 
tained in the United States for currency and 
other purposes. In spite of the fact that the 
gold output of the world doubled between 1890 
and 1897, and nearly doubled again between 
1897 and 1911, money is dear, and is likely to be 
so long as present conditions last. 

The reason for the higher cost of living is to 
be found in the movement of the population, 
from the dulness of the plough to the sprightli- 
ness of the cinematograph. This choice every 
freeman has a right to make for himself, but the 
trouble arises when the politician comes forward 
and pays his admission to the cinematograph en- 
tertainment, out of the public funds, in order to 
get his vote. The man who does not leave the 
plough under those conditions is either a fool or 
a saint, and the percentage of the growth of 
cities is a fair measure of their relative numbers. 
The increased cost of living is the result, not of 
too much gold, but of too little labor on the land, 
and this is due, in turn, to the voluptuous rhet- 
oric of the political street- walkers, whose prom- 
ises of pleasure are as illegitimate as they are 
impossible of fulfilment. A debtor nation like 
Germany is highly sensitive to these conditions, 
and just as she is overcoming, by her splendid 



504 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

success as a manufacturing nation this problem, 
she is met by increased and ever-increasing ri- 
vahy. America, in 1901, exported $466,000,- 
000 of manufactures; in 1891 only $188,000,000; 
but in 1911, $910,000,000; and in 1912, $1,021,- 
753,918. We now have in America 225,000 
manufacturing plants employing 6,000,000 peo- 
ple, with an annual pay-roll of $3,500,000,000 
and producing every twelve months $15,000,- 
000,000 worth of goods. The total value of ex- 
ports and imports of Japan thirty years ago was 
$30,000,000, or 87 cents per capita; in 1911 the 
figures were $480,000,000, or $10 per capita. 
England during the years 1911 and 1912 sur- 
passed all previous figures both for exports and 
imports. Germany's rivals, it is thus seen, have 
not been idle. 

The agricultural population of Germany in 
1850 was 65 in the 100; it is now less than one 
third. In 1911, after a bad year for the farm- 
ers, Germany was obliged to pay out some $200,- 
000,000 more than usual for food. The total 
loans of the German banks on industrial securi- 
ties rose from $107,000,000 in 1890 to $632,- 
000,000 in 1910, and bankers themselves admit 
that Germany has fallen into the error of seek- 
ing and accepting credit far beyond the value of 
the capital that they have to work with. Still 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 505 

more dangerous is the fact that 55 per cent, of 
the savings-bank moneys of Germany is locked 
up in mortgages. In 1907, 217 new companies 
were formed in Germany, issuing $62,050,900 
in securities; in 1909, 179 new companies issued 
$54,929,450 of securities; in 1910, 186 new com- 
panies issued $57,437,700 of securities. In 1910, 
340 companies increased their capital by $142,- 
657,200. In 1910 there were 5,295 companies 
in Germany with a nominal capital of $3,680,- 
979,400. It is estimated that since 1895 there 
has been invested in industrial companies in 
Germany $1,200,000,000. It is to be said also 
that since 1897 German agricultural produc- 
tion has doubled, German industrial production 
increased sevenfold, and Germany is said to 
have $4,750,000,000 in her savings-banks. The 
value of imports for home consumption, exclu- 
sive of the precious metals, in 1911 was $2,386,- 
200,000; the value of the exports of home prod- 
uce, exclusive of the precious metals, was 
$2,025,450,000. It is a quaint result of her 
temperament and her good forestry, that Ger- 
many sells $25,000,000 worth of toys a year; 
she is veritably the workshop of Santa Glaus, 
and many more than 25,000,000 children would 
bless her did they know. 

German financiers affirm that she can stand 



506 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

alone financially, while others assert that one 
sixth of her capital, I have heard it placed at 
one third, is borrowed from France and Eng- 
land. It is certain at least that the American 
panic of 1907, and the recent war in the Near 
East, have seriously embarrassed Germany finan- 
cially. 

As Germany can only feed, even in good har- 
vest years, forty-eight or forty-nine millions of 
her people, a large proportion of her profits from 
industry must necessarily go to the purchase of 
food for the other sixteen or seventeen millions. 
The consumption of meat has increased among 
all classes in Germany, and both the demands 
of the individual and of the state have increased 
with the increased wealth of the country. In 
Prussia alone the number of those subject to in- 
come tax has increased from 2,400,000 in 1892 
to 6,200,000 in 1912; but the taxes have in- 
creased as well, or from $800,000,000 to $1,675,- 
000,000. 

In the endeavor to increase the manufact- 
uring output and to find new markets German 
credit has been stretched to a dangerous tenu- 
ity. While the war feeling was at its height 
the Kolnische Zeitung, a conservative and able 
journal, wrote: "In case of war both France and 
Germany will be obliged to borrow; but it is 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 507 

certain that the credit of Germany cannot as 
yet be compared with the credit of France: this 
is a strong guarantee of peace." 

Wermuth, said by impartial judges to be the 
ablest secretary of the treasury the German 
Empire has had in a quarter of a century, re- 
signed in 1912, on the general ground that he 
would not be responsible for the finances of the 
empire, if it was proposed to continue the con- 
stant increase of national expenditure, by a con- 
stant increase of borrowing, and an ever-increas- 
ing amount of interest-bearing liabilities. He 
must have smiled to himseK when an Imperial 
issue at four per cent, put out in February, 1913, 
was not only not over-subscribed but not even 
all taken. 

Unlike the French, who invest their savings 
small and large in national loans, the Germans 
neglect even their own national loans, preferring 
the higher returns for their investments from the 
innumerable industries launched in modern Ger- 
many ; so pronounced is this form of investment, 
that a director of the Deutsche Bank has warned 
his countrymen, that every month's profits are 
no sooner gained than they are put out again in 
new enterprises, either by the individuals them- 
selves, or by the banks in which they are de- 
posited. As a result, the liquid capital at the 



508 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

disposal of Germany is dangerously out of pro- 
portion to her borrowings and her working capi- 
tal. It shows a fine confidence in the future, 
and it proves what needs no proof : the immense 
industrial and commercial progress, and the im- 
mense sea-carrying trade of Germany. Ger- 
many is like a man with $1,000 in the bank 
to check upon, but doing business with $100,000 
of borrowed capital, upon which he must pay 
interest, and out of which he must take his 
running expenses. Such a one has no provi- 
sion for a bad year, and must depend upon 
more credit in case of trouble; and in the case of 
Germany, it may be added, his personal and 
family expenses have largely increased. The 
German imperial debt had increased during 
the first twenty-two years of the present Em- 
peror's reign, or from 1888 to 1910, by $1,040,- 
000,000, and of that sum some $650,000,000 
were added in the ten years from 1900 to 1910, 
when Germany was building her fleet. 

Between the years 1905 and 1910 the total ex- 
port trade of Germany increased by $408,225,- 
000, but the whole of the increase was due to the 
heavier forms of manufactures: machinery, iron 
ware, coal-tar dyes, iron wire, steel rails, and raw 
iron. The increasing competition is shown by 
the fact that during those same years her exports 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 509 

of the finer manufactures, such as cotton and 
woollen goods, clothing, gold and silver ware, 
porcelain, maps, prints, and the like, actually 
decreased by $66,975,000! 

I am not maintaining for a moment that these 
problems are peculiar to Germany, but merely 
that, owing to the rapid progress, they are ag- 
gravated, and that to point out Germany as a 
model of successful achievement, along these 
and other lines, in order to bolster up political 
cure-alls at home, is a betrayal of crass ignorance 
of the general internal situation of the country, 
and once such prejudiced pleaders are found out, 
the rebound will go too far the other way. That 
were a pity, too, for we have much to learn from 
Germany. 

The $30,000,000 in gold in the Juhus Tower at 
Spandau, called the war-chest, and the income 
from railroads, forests, and mines, are to be put 
down on the other side of the ledger, but as a 
year's war, it is calculated, would cost France, 
England, or Germany some $2,300,000,000 each, 
these sums are of negligible importance. 

The Prussian railways cost $2,250,000,000, 
and are now valued at twice that sum, and pay 
an average of seven per cent, on the invested cap- 
ital. Maintenance costs are included in the 
total annual expenses, and there is no, so it 



510 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

is claimed, actual depreciation. Of the net rev- 
enue of $157,330,417 in 1909, about $55,000,000 
are transferred to the state revenue, out of 
which all charges of the state, including interest 
on bonds, are paid. The rest is used for new con- 
struction, sinking funds, reserve funds, and so on. 

The report of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission of 1909-1910 states that there are nearly 
$19,000,000,000 of railway capital outstanding 
in America. There are 240,438 miles of single 
track in the United States; 59,000 locomotives, 
35,000 for freight, and a total of 2,290,000 cars 
of all kinds ; and the railways carried in one year 
971,683,000 passengers and 1,850,000,000 tons 
of freight. In 1910, 386 persons were killed, but, 
what is often forgotten, more than one half the 
total accidents were due to stealing rides and 
trespassing on the tracks. The railways in the 
United States are our largest purchasers by far, 
and for every dollar they earn 42 cents is spent 
in wages, 26 cents for material, raw or manufact- 
ured, before anything is given out for interest 
on loans or dividends. 

A first-class ticket in Germany is taxed 16 per 
cent, on the price of the ticket; a second-class 
ticket, 8 per cent. ; a third-class ticket, 4 per cent. ; 
the fourth-class ticket, nothing. Crowded and 
uncomfortable travelling in Germany is cheap; 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 511 

comfortable travelling in Germany is very dear 
indeed. The herding of people in the fourth- 
class carriages in Germany resembles our cattle- 
cars rather than transportation for human 
beings. Such conditions would not be toler- 
ated in America, but against these state-owned 
railways there is no redress. No luggage, ex- 
cept hand luggage, is carried free. Not once, 
but many times in Germany, my first-class 
ticket found me no accommodation, and often 
in changing from the main line to a branch line 
not even a first-class compartment. Shippers in 
the coal and iron districts, when I was there, 
complained bitterly that there were not enough 
freight-cars, that their complaints were smoth- 
ered in bureaucratic portfolios, and that private 
enterprise in the shape of proposals to build new 
lines was disregarded. The tyranny of Prussia 
extends even into the railway field. The Oder- 
berg-Wien line was built to avoid using the 
Saxon state railway lines, was a spite railway in 
fact. Here again there was no redress, no one 
to appeal to against the autocrat. 

In a debate in the Reichstag, in January, 1913, 
there was much complaint that the Prussian 
government was conducting the railways with 
the least possible outlay, thus saving money for 
the state, but hampering the industrial interests 
of the country. It was stated that there were 



512 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

not enough engines or freight-cars, there was an 
inadequate staff, and that as a consequence, the 
loss to the coal industry had been $11,500,000 
and to the coal-miners $3,375,000. 

On the state-owned railways of the west of 
France the break-down is ludicrously complete, 
and the people are staggered by the official es- 
timates that it will require at least $100,000,000 
to put them in decent running order. 

In twenty years the American railways have 
practically been rebuilt, with heavier rails, bet- 
ter bridges, more permanent stations, and so on; 
while twenty years ago it cost a passenger 2.165 
cents to travel a mile, to-day it costs him 1.916 
cents. We need a lot of bustling about abroad 
before we realize how much we have to be grate- 
ful for at home ! 

Probably the most costly and the most trouble- 
some of Germany's problems is her conquered 
provinces : Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace- 
Lorraine, and Poland. Hanover, which was 
taken by Prussia and her king deposed, is now- 
adays a minor matter of the relations between 
courts, individuals, and families, which may be 
said to be settled by the arranged marriage be- 
tween the Kaiser's charming daughter and the 
heir to the Duke of Cumberland, whose ancestors 
were kings of Hanover. 

The Danes, on the other hand, in the northern 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 513 

part of these provinces, still resist Prusslaniza- 
tion. They keep to themselves and their lan- 
guage, send their children to school in Den- 
mark, and resist all attempts at social and racial 
incorporation. They are troublesome, as an in- 
dependent and surly daughter-in-law might be 
troublesome. Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, on 
the contrary, are outspoken and potentially dan- 
gerous foes in Germany's own household. 

In 1872 Bismarck said: "Alsace-Lorraine will 
be placed on an equality with the other German 
states, ... so that the people may be induced 
to forget, in a comparatively short time, the 
trouble and distress of the war and of annexa- 
tion." In 1912, a loyal Alsatian German writes: 
"Das Elsass, dies jungstgeborene Kind der 
deutschen Volkerfamilie, braucht etwas mehr 
Liebe." Forty years of Prussian rule have not ful- 
filled the promise of Bismarck. This same Alsa- 
tian writer continues : " In short, we are approach- 
ing ever nearer to the condition of the citizens of 
all the other German States, as Baden, Saxony, 
Bavaria, where they are also not always of one 
mind with the higher ruling powers." 

It is difficult for the American, who, no mat- 
ter what particular State he lives in, is first 
of all a citizen of the United States, to under- 
stand this jealousy and, in some quarters, bitter 



514 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

dislike of Prussia. If the State of New York 
had sixty miUion of our ninety miUion popu- 
lation, and if the governor of New York were 
also perpetual President of the United States, 
commanded the army and navy, controlled the 
foreign policy, and appointed the cabinet min- 
isters, who were responsible to him alone, we 
could get an approximate idea of how the people 
of Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Cali- 
fornia would feel toward New York. This is a 
rough-drawn comparison with the situation in 
Germany. If, in addition, we had the Philip- 
pine Islands where Maine is, and Cuba where 
Texas is, it is easy to recognize the consequent 
complications. 

We should remember this picture in dealing 
with this German problem, which, at any rate, 
from the point of view of kindly feeling and suc- 
cessful adoption of these foreign peoples into 
the German family, has been a dire failure. The 
miserable failure of the Germans in Southwest 
Africa, their inconclusive war with the Herreros, 
and the absolute break-down of Prussian meth- 
ods with the natives, is scarcely more typical 
than the failure in Alsace-Lorraine and Poland. 
The Prussian belief in sand-paper as an emollient 
must be by now rudely shaken. 

At last a constitution has been given the two 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 515 

conquered provinces. The governor is to be 
advised by a parliament, but the government is 
not responsible to the parliament, which is com- 
posed of two houses. The upper house has 
thirty-six members, eighteen of whom are nom- 
inees of the Emperor and eighteen from the 
churches, universities, and principal cities. The 
lower house is to be elected by popular franchise. 
Three years' residence in the same place entitles 
a man to a vote, but every voter over thirty -five 
years of age has two votes, and every voter over 
forty -five has three votes. 

This, as an American can appreciate, has not 
been received with enthusiasm, and their conduct 
has been so provoking that the Emperor, during 
a recent visit, scolded the people, in an interview 
with the mayor of a certain town, and, what 
caused great amusement among the enemies of 
Prussia, threatened to incorporate them into 
Prussia, as had been done with Hanover, if they 
were not better behaved. This, of course, was 
seized upon as an admission that to be taken 
into the Prussian family was of all the hardships 
the most dreadful. The socialist journal Vor- 
wdrts spoke of Prussia as "that brutal country 
which thus openly confesses its dishonor to all 
the world." Herr Scheidemann asked in the 
Reichstag, if Prussia then acknowledged herseK 



516 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

to be a sort of house of correction, and "has 
Prussia, then, become the German Siberia?" In 
1911 the Reichstag gave the provinces three 
votes in the Federal Council. 

Metz, it is said, is more French than ever, and 
thousands troop across the boundaries on the 
anniversary of the French national holiday, to 
celebrate it on French soil. The conquered prov- 
inces are kept in order, but the French language, 
French customs, French culture, are still to the 
fore, and so far as loyalty, affection, or a change 
of mind and heart is concerned the conversion 
is still incomplete. The inhabitants have been 
baptized Germans, but very few of them have 
taken voluntarily, their first communion of na- 
tionalization. 

" On changerait plutot le coeur de place. 
Que de changer la vieille Alsace." 

The German, Karl Lamprecht, in his valuable 
history of contemporary Germany, is more hope- 
ful of the situation than are other writers and 
observers. Professor Werner Wittich maintains 
that the best of the intellectual side of life in 
Alsace is impregnated with French culture and 
traditions; and even German officers long sta- 
tioned in the two conquered provinces admit the 
stubborn allegiance of the people to French cus- 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 517 

toms, habits, beliefs, and traditions. But how- 
ever that may be, and it is admittedly a ques- 
tion that different prejudices and hopes will 
answer differently, there is no denial on the part 
of any one, high or low, that the Prussian bureau- 
cratic mandarins have made no progress in win- 
ning the affection or the voluntary loyalty of the 
people. The Prussian has had recourse to the 
advice given by Prince Billow, "if you cannot 
be loved, then you must be feared." A friend 
who is only a friend, an ally who is only an ally, 
a servant who only serves you because he is 
afraid of you, is not only an uncomfortable but 
a dangerous factor in any establishment, whether 
domestic or national. Corporalism, begun by 
Frederick the Great and fastened upon Ger- 
many by Bismarck, has had its successes. I 
recognized them, indeed, on returning to Ger- 
many after twenty-five years, as astounding 
successes, but they have their weak side too. A 
barracks can never be the ideal of a home, nor 
a corporal the ideal of a guide, philosopher, 
and friend. Their own philosopher Nietzsche 
writes: " the state is the coldest of all cold mon- 
sters." 

Joseph de Maistre, writing of the Slav tem- 
perament, says: "Si on enterrait un desir Slave 
sous une forteresse, il la ferait sauter." Ger- 
many has some reason to believe that this is true. 



518 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

In the northeast of Germany Hve some 3,000,- 
000 Poles under Prussian supervision and laws, 
and ruled by a Prussian governor. There are 
some 7,000,000 or 8,000,000 Poles divided be- 
tween Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia, 
and behind these are 165,000,000 Russians. 
The boundary between this mass and Germany 
is one of sand; and the railway journey from 
Posen to Berlin, is a matter of only four hours. 
If we were in Germany's shoes, we should prob- 
ably take some pains to be well guarded in that 
quarter. We should, however, do it in quite an- 
other fashion. We should, if possible, turn over 
the inhabitants to their own governing, as Eng- 
land has done in South Africa, as we have tried 
to do in Cuba, and as we would do gladly in the 
Philippines, if every intelligent man who knows 
the situation there, were not assured that rob- 
bery, murder, and license would follow on the 
heels of our departure; and that instead of doing 
a magnanimous thing we should be shirking our 
responsibilities in the most cowardly fashion. It 
is bad enough to know, that we have such cyni- 
cal political sophists in Congress, that they would 
even suffer that catastrophe to innocent people 
in the Philippines, if they thought it would make 
them votes at home. 

Prussia does not recognize such methods of 
rulingw Corporalism is their only way, and. 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 519 

where the people are fit to govern themselves, a 
very bad and humiliating way, for the Eden of 
the bureaucrat is the hell of the governed. If 
the Germans approve it for themselves, it is not 
our business to comment; but where these meth- 
ods are applied to foreign peoples, we both antici- 
pate and applaud their failure. 

The insurrections in Russian and Austrian 
Poland, had their echoes in Posen, and since 
1849 Prussia has tried in every way to substi- 
tute Germans for Poles, in the country, and to 
make the German language predominant in the 
churches, schools, and in the administration. 
The Poles have resisted, emphasizing their re- 
sistance in 1867, when they were included in the 
North German Federation, and again in 1871, 
when they were included in the new German 
Empire. 

The Emperor William I, in 1886, said: "The 
increasing predominance of the Polish over the 
German element in certain provinces of the 
east makes it a duty of the government to guar- 
antee the existence and the development of the 
German population." Since 1871 the Poles 
have increased so much faster than the Germans 
that there is danger of complete extermination 
of the German population. In 1902 the grand- 
son of William I, the present Emperor, said at 
Marienburg: "Polish arrogance is unbearable, 



520 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and I am obliged to appeal to my people to de- 
fend themselves against it, for the preservation 
of their national well-being. It is a question of 
the defence of the civilization and the culture 
of Germany. To-day and to-morrow, as in the 
past, we must fight against the common enemy." 
This speech of the Emperor was made at Marien- 
burg, a fine old town, once very prosperous, and 
in the days of the Wars of the Roses playing a 
conspicuous part with the other Hanseatic towns. 
This town was also the head and seat of the 
Teutonic Order, and it was this Teutonic Order 
which, in 1230, began the work of converting the 
then heathen Prussians, along lines not unlike 
those of the Prussian Ansiedlungskommission of 
to-day. 

Prussia has attempted to solve this question 
by establishing a government in the province, 
pledged to the introduction of the German lan- 
guage, and so far as possible of German manners 
and customs. This has been met with fierce 
opposition, and never have I heard in the col- 
onies of other countries, except in Korea, under 
the present Japanese administration, such fanat- 
ical hatred, expressed in words, as I have heard 
in Posen. If you dislike Prussia, do not attempt 
to revile her yourself; rather go to Posen and 
hear it done in a far more satisfying way. 

The religious question enters largely into the 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 521 

matter, and the ignorant Poles are even taught 
that the Virgin Mary, or the "Pohsh Queen," 
will not understand their intercessions if they 
are not made in the Polish language. In 1870 
there was one Polish newspaper in Germany, 
to-day there are 138. . / 

From 1886 to 1910 the Ansiedlungshommis- 
sion or committee of colonization, have spent 
$170,896,325, and have received $51,863,175, 
leaving a net expenditure of $119,033,150. This 
large expenditure has resulted in the settle- 
ment upon the land of 18,507 families, or about 
111,000 persons. The total number settled 
is now 131,000 persons. Each male adult Ger- 
man settler has_cost the state something over 
j32,000! This is probably the most extrava- 
gant colonization scheme ever attempted in the 
world. 

But even this expenditure has not brought 
success, and for a very interesting reason. 
Again the Germans have been remarkably suc- 
cessful in their dealings with the inanimate, but 
the Arcana imperii are still hidden from them. 
They have redeemed the land, taught the Poles, 
as well as the German settlers, how to farm suc- 
cessfully; largely increased the output of grain, 
fruit, pigs, calves, chickens, geese, and eggs, for 
which Germany spends several hundred millions 



522 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

a year abroad; and seen to it that the breed of 
cows, pigs, horses, chickens, and geese is kept at 
a high standard. But now the Poles will sell 
no more land. They have profited, not been 
ruined, by what has come out of the belly of the 
Trojan horse! The commission is at a stand- 
still, and it is now proposed to enforce the Prus- 
sian law of 1908 for the expropriation of Po- 
lish estates. This law was overwhelmingly de- 
feated in the Reichstag in February, 1913, but 
the Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg declared 
that it was an affair of Prussia, with which the 
Reichstag has nothing to do, and the sand-paper 
of the Prussian bureaucracy will probably be 
rubbed upon the Polish woiind anew. 

This attempt to build a line of moral and in- 
tellectual forts, supplemented by German set- 
tlers, on the land between Russia and Prussia, 
and to stop the inrush of the Slavic population, 
has ample excuse behind it. It is undoubtedly 
in case of war a serious danger to Germany to 
leave herseK unguarded there. As to what will 
come of the social and racial questions, prophecy 
alone can answer, and I have far too much im- 
agination to venture upon prophecy. The care 
and thoroughness with which the work is done 
is beyond all praise, but it is as difficult to make 
your brother love you by taking thought there- 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 523 

on, as it is to add a cubit to one's stature by the 
same method. / 

Professor Ludwig Bernhard, while regretting 
that this attempt at Germanization has not suc- 
ceeded, admits that Prussian methods are hope- 
less in such matters. They have, on the con- 
trary, awakened national feeling, encouraged the 
forming of agricultural societies, and strength- 
ened the Bank of Posen, which has become the 
financial citadel of opposition. Professor Bern- 
hard goes so far as to say that he doubts if 
even the putting into force of the expropriation 
law of 1908 will bring about any better results. 
To an American this lack of unity seems to be 
perhaps of exaggerated importance. Wir brau- 
chen nicht diese Nordlichter (We do not need 
these northern luminaries), is a phrase of a cer- 
tain Bavarian official, and in lower or louder 
tones one hears the phrase all over Germany out- 
side of Prussia, and loudest of all in these con- 
quered provinces. 

To legislate men into mechanical relations 
with one another may keep the peace tem- 
porarily, but it is not a final solution of the in- 
tricate problem of living together in our hud- 
dled civilization. The day has gone by when 
we could rule men without gaining at least their 
respect, and if possible their affection. Prus- 



524 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

sia's stiffness and newness as a governing power; 
her lack of a high moral or religious tone, for 
there is a rapidly increasing tendency there to 
agree with the writer during the French Revolu- 
tion: la question de dieu manque d'actualite; her 
hard and inflexible methods, make her a churlish 
neighbor and an arrogant master. In forty 
years Prussia has accomplished great things de- 
spite these disadvantages of temperament, of 
tradition, and despite these external dangers 
and problems. She is learning now that there 
are not only individuals but whole peoples who 
say, as William the Conqueror said to the Pope : 
*' Never have I taken an oath of fealty, nor shall 
I ever do so." 



X 

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, AND MALICE" 

IT has always been considered sound doctrine 
among Christians that they should love one 
another. Vigorous exponents of the doc- 
trine, however, have ever been few in numbers. 
As the world gets more crowded, and we find it 
more and more difficult to make room for our- 
selves, and to get a living, we find antagonisms 
and defensive tactics, occupying so much of our 
time and energy that loving one another is al- 
most lost sight of. It has been found necessary 
even among those of the same nation to legislate 
for love. We call such laws, with dull contempt 
for irony, social legislation. In Germany, and 
now in England, the modern sacrament of loving 
one another consists in licking stamps; these 
stamps are then stuck on cards, which bind the 
brethren together in mutual and adhesive help- 
fulness. 

With nations the problem is not so easily and 
superficially solved; because no one body of 
legislators and police has jurisdiction over all 
the parties concerned. As a result of this just 

525 



5^6 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

now in Europe, wisdom is not the arbiter; on 
the contrary, prejudices, passions, indiscretions, 
and follies on the part of all the antagonists 
preserve a certain dangerous equipoise. 

After you have seen something and heard a 
great deal of these antagonisms between nations; 
read their newspapers ; talked with the protago- 
nists and with their rulers, and with the responsi- 
ble servants of the State; discussed with pro- 
fessors and legislators these questions; and 
listened to the warriors on both sides, you are 
somewhat bewildered. There are so many rea- 
sons why this one should distrust that one, so 
many rather unnatural alliances for protection 
against one another, so much friendship of the 
sort expressed by the phrase, "on aime ton jours 
quelqu'un contre quelqu'un," so much suspicious 
watching the movements of one another, that 
one is reminded of the jingle of one's youth: 

"There's a cat in the garden laying for a rat. 
There's a boy with a catapult a-laying for the cat, 
The cat's name is Susan, the boy's name is Jim, 
And his father round the corner is a-laying for him." 

Even to the youngest of us, and to the most 
inexperienced, this betokens a strained situation. 
The first and most natural result is that each 
nation's "watchmen who sit above in an high 
tower," whether they be the professionals se- 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 527 

lected by the people or merely amateur patriots, 
are forever crying out for greater armaments. 

At tlie time of the Boxer troubles in China, 
when Germany sent some ships to demand repara- 
tion for the murder of her ambassador in Peking, 
she had only two ships left at home to guard her 
own shores. When all England was exasperated 
by the Boer telegram sent by the Kaiser, or, if 
the truth is to be told, by his advisers, the late 
Baron Marshal von Bieberstein and Prince 
Hohenlohe, to President Kriiger, official Ger- 
many lamented publicly that she lacked a power- 
ful navy. Only a week after the Boers declared 
war the Kaiser is reported to have said: "Bitter 
is our need of a strong navy." Germany has 
noticed, too, not without suspicion, that — 

In 1904 England had 202,000 tons of war- 
ships in the Mediterranean and none in the 
North Sea. 

In 1907 England had 135,000 tons of war- 
ships in the Mediterranean and 166,000 tons in 
the North Sea. 

In 1909 England had 123,000 tons of war- 
ships in the Mediterranean and 427,000 tons in 
the North Sea. 

In 1912 England had 126,000 tons of war- 
ships in the Mediterranean and 481,000 tons in 
the North Sea. 



528 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

At last accounts England had 50,000 tons of 
war-ships in the Mediterranean and 500,000 tons 
in the North Sea. 

There has been a steady increase of the navy 
in Germany. In 1900 the tonnage of war-ships 
and large cruisers over 5,000 tons was 152,000; 
in 1911 it was 823,000. The number of heavy 
guns in 1900 was 52; in 1911 it was 330. The 
horse-power of engines in 1900 was 160,000; in 
1911 it was 1,051,000. The naval crews in 1900 
numbered 28,326; in 1911, 57,353; and in 1913 
the German naval personnel will consist of 3,394 
officers and 69,495 men. Between 1900 and 1911 
the tonnage of the British fleet increased from 
215,000 to 1,716,000; of the German fleet from 
152,000 to 829,000. 

In ten years British naval expenditure has in- 
creased from $172,500,000 to $222,500,000; in 
Germany the expenditure has jumped from $47,- 
500,000 to $110,000,000; in America the increase 
is from $80,000,000 to $132,500,000. Out of 
these total sums Great Britain spends one third, 
America one fifth, and Germany one half on 
new construction. 

Germany has a navy league numbering over 
one million active and honorary members; a 
periodical. Die Flotte, published by the league 
with a circulation of over 400,000. This league 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 529 

not only educates but excites the whole nation 
by a vigorous campaign which never ceases. It 
takes its members on excursions to seaports to 
see the ships; it holds exhibitions throughout 
the country with pictures and lecturers; it sup- 
ports seamen's homes, and helps to equip boys 
wishing to enter the navy ; it lends its encourage- 
ment to the two school-ships which are partly 
supported from public funds; it sees to it that 
war-ships are named after provinces and cities, 
creating a friendly rivalry among them; and 
lately, out of its surplus funds, it has presented 
a gun-boat to the nation. 

The leading spirit of this organization is 
Admiral von Tirpitz, at present the German 
secretary of the navy and probably the most 
dangerous mischief-maker in Europe. In ad- 
dition to this work a campaign is waged in the 
press for the increase of the navy, in which a 
number of experts are engaged. I have been 
told by Germans who ought to know, but who 
deprecate this exciting campaigning, that the 
press is so largely influenced by Admiral von 
Tirpitz and his corps of press-agents and 
writers, that it is even difficult to procure the 
publication of a protest or a reply. Indeed, 
were it my habit to go into personal matters, 
I could offer ample proof of this contention, that 



530 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the opponents of naval expansion are cleverly 
shut out of the press altogether. 

Wilhelmshafen, the naval station on the North 
Sea, has been fortified till it is said to be impreg- 
nable; the same has been done for Heligoland, 
and the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser have 
also been strongly fortified. At Kiel are the 
naval technical school, an arsenal, and dry and 
floating docks, and the canal itself is being 
widened and deepened to meet the needs of the 
largest ships of war. 

When it is remembered that the beginnings 
of all this date back only to 1898, when the first 
navy bill was passed through the Reichstag with 
much difficulty, and only after the Emperor and 
his ministers had brought every influence to bear 
upon the members, Germany is certainly to be 
congratulated upon her success. Nor is she to 
be blamed for remembering, and regretting, that 
the two most important harbors used by her 
trade are Antwerp and Rotterdam, the one in 
Belgium, the other in Holland. 

The Kielerwoche, or Kiel Regatta, has grown 
from the sailing-matches of a few small yachts 
into one of the best-managed, most picturesque, 
and gayest yachting weeks in the world. Indeed, 
from the stand-point of hospitality, orderliness, 
imposing array of shipping, and good racing and 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 531 

friendliness to the stranger, I am not sure that 
it is equalled at either Newport or Cowes. Were 
I writing merely from my personal experience, I 
should declare unhesitatingly that it is the most 
splendid and best-managed picnic on the water 
that one can attend, and lovers of yachts and 
yachting should not fail to see it. This Kieler- 
woche, too, has, and is intended to have, an influ- 
ence in teaching the Germans to aid and abet 
their Emperor and his ministers in making Ger- 
many a great sea power. 

When a nation for more than a hundred years 
has been quite comfortably safe from any fear 
of attack because she has been easily first in 
commerce, wealth, industry, and in sea power, 
it comes as a shock, even to a phlegmatic people, 
to learn that they are being rapidly overhauled 
commercially, financially, industrially, and as a 
fighting force on the sea; and all this within a 
few years. 

England with her money subsidies, with her 
troops, and with her navy has heretofore pro- 
vided against Continental aggression by the 
diplomatic philosophy of a balance of power. 
She has arranged her alliances with Continental 
powers so that no one of them could become a 
menace to herself. She did so against the Spain 
of Charles V, the France of Louis XIV, the 



532 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

France of Napoleon, the Russia of the late Czar, 
and now against the Germany of William II. 
The France of the great Napoleon, in attempting 
to complete the commercial isolation of England 
by compelling Russia to close her ports to her, 
buried herself in snow and ice on the way back 
from Moscow, and delivered herself up com- 
pletely a little later at Waterloo. That was 
the nearest to success of any attempt to break 
through the doctrine of the balance of power. 

In the year 800 A. D. the Catholic Church, 
which took over the Roman supremacy to trans- 
late it into a spiritual empire, accepted a Ger- 
man Emperor, Charlemagne, as her man-at-arms. 
One hundred and fifty years later she accepted 
still another. Otto I. This partnership was called 
the Holy Roman Empire. It has been noted, but 
is still misunderstood, that the difference between 
the Catholic Church before and after the Refor- 
mation was very marked. The Catholic Church 
claimed to be not only a system of belief but a 
system of government. Infallibility was to in- 
clude secular as well as religious matters, and the 
church strove to rule as a secular emperor and as 
a spiritual tyrant. To-day Roman Catholicism 
is a sect, one among many; Roman Catholics 
themselves would be the last to consent to any 
temporal universal power. 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 533 

The Protestants, too, were at first inclined to 
the methods of Rome. Luther teaches intoler- 
ance, and Calvin burns a heretic and writes in 
favor of the doctrine: Jure gladii coercendos esse 
hereticos. The real reformation only came when 
we had reformed the reformers, but it was that 
spiritual and political legacy from Rome that 
the Teuton world, including ourselves, fought 
to nullify. 

There was no successful revolt against this 
curious spiritual Csesarism until the son of a 
Saxon miner named Luther married out of 
monkdom, burnt the Pope's commands on a bon- 
fire, and plunged all Europe first into a peasants' 
war, followed by a dividing of Europe between 
a Protestant union and a Catholic league, and 
then a thirty years' war, which destroyed two 
thirds of the population of what is now Germany. 
After three hundred years of disunion and 
hatreds, Prussia united their country by a cement 
of blood and iron, and in the last forty years has 
made out of her the most powerful nation on the 
continent of Europe. 

It is only very lately that any of us have real- 
ized what has happened. So little attention has 
been paid to the matter that there is no sufiicient 
and worthy history of Germany in English. 
More than we realize, Germany is a new factor 



534 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in politics, a new rival in commerce, a new 
knight in the tournament lists. This accounts, 
in no small degree, for the uneasiness Germany 
causes in the world. 

Forty years ago Germany was known to a 
few students as having supplied us with music, 
mythology, and a certain amount of enchanting 
literature; scholarship along certain lines; and 
work in philosophy that a few in America and in 
England were studying. As a knight in shining 
armor, demanding a place at the council-board 
of nations, and ready to resent any passing over 
of her claims to recognition in the discussion and 
settlement of international politics, she is a new- 
comer. 

One of the chief causes for the restlessness, 
particularly in England, the heart of the great- 
est empire in the world, is that this new-comer 
must be made room for at the table, received 
with courtesy, and consulted. Another individ- 
ual has married into the family, and must grad- 
ually find her place there. Of all nations in 
the world, England is the slowest to make new 
friends and acquaintances, and easily the most 
awkward in doing so. She is a good friend when 
you know her, but with the most abominable 
manners to strangers. 

The Englishman, for example, pops into his 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 535 

club to escape the world, not to seek it there. 
The English club and the English home are 
primarily for seclusion, not for companionship, 
and this characteristic alone is wofully hard for 
the stranger to understand. To the gregarious 
German, priding himself upon Gemilthlichkeit, 
loving reunions, restaurants, his Stammtischy 
formal and punctilious in his politeness, unused 
to the ways of the world, but yet convinced that 
he is now a great man politically and commer- 
cially, the Englishman is not only an enigma but 
an insult. I am criticising neither. I have re- 
ceived unbounded hospitality and friendliness 
from both. I have ridden, fought, drunk, trav- 
elled, and lived with both, but for that very 
reason I understand how horribly and continu- 
ally they rub one another the wrong way. 

In the fundamental matter of morals the Ger- 
man looks upon the Englishman as a hypocrite, 
and the Englishman looks upon the German as 
rather unpolished and undignified. Berlin is 
open all night, London closes at half -past twelve. 
The British Sunday is a gloomy suppression of 
vitality, touched up here and there with preach- 
ing and hymn-singing, and fringed with sur- 
reptitious golf ; the German Sunday is a national 
fair, with a blossoming of all kinds of amuse- 
ments, deluged with beer, and attended by 



536 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

whole families as their only relaxation during the 
week. 

The German licenses vice, lotteries, and gam- 
bling; the Englishman refuses to recognize the 
existence of any of the three. The German does 
not understand the Englishman's point of view 
in these matters, which is that, though he knows 
these things to exist, and that he is no better in 
actual practice than other men, he refuses to 
accept these as his ideal. He denounces and 
passes judgment upon, and punishes men and 
women, who go too far in their appreciation and 
practice of apolausticism as a philosophy of life. 
He might have run away from danger himself, 
but he none the less scorns the man who did so. 
The shipwreck, the fire, the test of moral courage 
and endurance, may have found him a coward, 
or weak, or a deserter, but he holds that he must 
none the less measure the coward, the weakling, 
and the deserter, not by his own possible weak- 
ness if put to the same tests, but by his ideal of 
a courageous and straightforward Englishman. 
I agree with him wholly and heartily. If our 
sympathy is to go out on every occasion, to the 
man who failed to come up to the mark of noble 
manhood, just because we feel that we might 
under like circumstances have failed too, then we 
give up the code of honor altogether, and our 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 537 

ideals droop to the level from which we fight 
and pray to be preserved. 

We pass judgment upon the coward, upon the 
failure, upon the man who has not mastered his 
life and life itself, unhesitatingly. It is hard to 
do, it looks as though one were without pity and 
without sympathy. Not so; it is because we have 
great sympathy, and I hope unending pity, and 
a growing charity, and constant willingness to 
lend a hand; but to condone failure is to com- 
mit the selfish and unpardonable cowardice of 
not judging another that you may not be forced 
to judge yourself too harshly. That is far from 
being hypocrisy. Indeed, in these days it is one 
of the hardest things to do, so fast are we level- 
ling down socially and politically and even 
morally. It looks like an assumption of supe- 
riority when, God knows, it is only a timorous 
attempt on our part not to lose our grip on the 
ideals that help to keep us out of the dust and 
the mud. But he who lets others off lightly in 
order that he may not be thought to have too 
high a standard himself, or because he fears that 
he may one day fail himself, such a one is the 
coward of cowards, the candidate for the lowest 
place in hell; and well he deserves it, for he 
helps to lower the standard of manhood, and he 
tarnishes the shield of honor of the whole race. 
Let them call us hypocrites till they strangle 



538 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

doing so, for when we lower our standards be- 
cause we fear that we cannot hve up to them 
ourselves, all will be lost. To be mild with other 
men, because we distrust ourselves, is a poison- 
ous sympathy that rots away the life of him who 
receives it, and of him who gives it, and ends in 
a slobbering charity which must finally protect 
itself by tyranny and cruelty. Not infrequently 
in dealing with individuals and with subject 
nations it is senseless cruelty to be over-kind. 

This sneer of Saxon hypocrisy, of "Perfide 
Albion," is seldom explained to other people by 
men of our race, and we Americans and English- 
men have taken little pains to make it clear. 
We should not be surprised, therefore, if we are 
misunderstood. We have been easily first so 
long that we have neglected the explanation or 
the defence of ourselves to others. 

The Germans, too, have something of the 
same indifference. A most sympathetic observer 
of German manners and customs, and a man for 
whose honesty and gentleness I have the highest 
esteem, Pere Didon, remarked of the Germans: 
*'J'ai essaye maintes fois de decouvrir chez I'Al- 
lemand une sympathie quelconque pour d'autres 
nations; je n'y ai pas reussi." 

I call attention again to the important point, 
that it has been difficult to manufacture an all- 
round German patriotism. As a consequence 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 539 

patriotism in Germany is more than a sentiment, 
it is a theory, a doctrine, a theme to which 
statesmen, philosophers and poets, and rulers 
devote their energies. The German looks upon 
his nation not only as a people, but as a race, 
almost as a formal religion; hence perhaps his 
hatred of the Jew and the Slav, and his difficul- 
ties with all foreign peoples within his borders. 
In order to build up his patriotism the German 
has been taught systematically to dislike first 
the Austrians, then the French, now the English; 
and let not the American suppose that he likes 
him any better, for he does not. This patriotism, 
once developed, was drawn on for funds for an 
army, then for a navy. At the present time 
there must be some explanation offered, and the 
explanation is fear of England, dislike of British 
arrogance. In one of his latest speeches the 
Kaiser said: ''We need this fleet to protect our- 
selves from arrogance"; that, of course, means, 
always means, British arrogance. 

From the moment a child goes to school, by 
pictures on the walls, by an indirect teaching of 
history and geography, he is led on discreetly to 
find England in Germany's way. At the present 
writing German school children, and German 
students, and German recruits are imbued with 
the idea that Germany's relations with England 
are in some sort an armistice. This poisonous 



540 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

teaching of patriotism has produced wide-spread 
enmity of feeling among the innocent, but this 
enmity has built the navy. And now that in 
certain quarters it is found desirable to soothe 
and calm this feeling, it proves to be more diffi- 
cult to subdue than it was to arouse. The mon- 
ster that Frankenstein called up devours its own 
creator. Now that England can no longer be 
the enemy, because Germany's greatest present 
and future danger is from the Slav races, there 
are evidences that the German state is teaching 
the dog not to bark at England any more. 

Germany has not neglected England, but of 
late she has paid her the wrong kind of attention. 
Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was the 
hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and 
writes: "Above all, speak no evil of England 
to them. They are proud of their country above 
all nations in the world, as they have good reason 
to be." 

Kant, the German philosopher, on his clock- 
like rounds in Konigsberg, knew something of 
England and writes of her: *'Die englische Na- 
tion, als Volk betrachtet, ist das schatzbarste 
Ganze von Menschen im Verhaltniss unter ein- 
ander; aber als Staat gegen fremde Staaten der 
verderblichste, gewaltsamste, herrschsiichtigste 
und kriegerregendste von alien." 

("The English, as a people, in their relations 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 541 

to one another are a most estimable body of men, 
but as a nation in their relations with other 
nations they are of all people the most perni- 
cious, the most violent, the most domineering, 
and the most strife-provoking.") 

Another German, something of a scholar, 
something of a philosopher, but a wit and a 
singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed 
a fee to the verger who had shown him around 
Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly 
give you twice as much if the collection were 
complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a 
greater man than the "starched, stiff" Welling- 
ton; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put 
on the table as God made them" and the "coun- 
try with three hundred religions and only one 
sauce" were a constant source of amused annoy- 
ance. The German professors and students, 
who in the early part of the nineteenth century 
lauded English constitutional liberty to the skies 
and made a god of Burke, have soured toward 
England since. 

"What does Germany want?" asked Thiers 
of the German historian Ranke. "To destroy 
the work of Louis XIV," was the reply. Pro- 
fessor Treitschke and his successor in the chair 
of history at Berlin, Professor Delbriick, have 
been outspoken in their denunciation of England. 



542 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Mommsen, Schmoller, Schiemann, Zorn of Bonn, 
and his colleague there, von Dirksen, Professor 
Dietrich Schaefer, Professor Adolph Wagner, 
and many other scholars have been, and are, poli- 
ticians in Germany, and none of them friendly to 
England, to France, or to America. Bismarck 
himself remarked of these gentlemen: "Die 
Politik ist keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der 
Herren Professoren sich einbilden, sie ist eben 
eine Kunst" ("Politics is not a science as many 
professorial gentlemen fancy; it is an art"); 
and again: "Die Arbeit des Diplomaten, seine 
Aufgabe, besteht in deni praktischen Verkehr 
mit Menschen, in der richtigen Beurtheilung von 
dem, was andere Leute unter gewissen IJm- 
standen wahrscheinlich thun werden, in der 
richtigen Erkennung der Absichten anderer; in 
der richtigen Darstellung der seinigen" ("The 
work of the diplomat, his chief task, indeed, 
consists in the practical dealing with men, in 
his sound judgment of what other people would 
probably do under certain circumstances, in his 
correct interpretation of the intentions and pur- 
poses of other people, and in the accurate pres- 
entation of his own"). 

He began his political life in 1862 with the 
phrase: "Die grossen Fragen konnen durch 
Reden und Majoritatsbeschliisse nicht entschie- 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 543 

den werden, sondern durch Eisen und Blut" 
("The great questions cannot be decided by 
speeches and the decisions of majorities, but by 
iron and blood"). 

It is a well-known professor who writes : *' Denn 
die einzige Gefahr, die den Frieden in Europa 
und damit den Weltfrieden droht, liegt in den 
krankhaften Ubertreibungen des englischen Im- 
perialismus " ("The only danger to the peace of 
Europe, and that includes the peace of the world, 
lies in the morbid excesses of British imperial- 
ism"). Another quotation from the same pen 
reads: "So far as other perils to the British 
Empire are concerned, they are of much the 
same character, but the empire suffers too from 
the selfish policy of English business, which, in 
order to create big business, does not hesitate to 
interfere with the declared policy of the state." 
Then follows the statement that English traders 
have smuggled guns to the Persian Gulf. 

Professor Zorn writes: "The possibility that 
while our Emperor was seeking rest and refresh- 
ment in Norwegian waters and enjoying the 
beauties of the Norwegian landscape, English 
ships were lying in readiness to annihilate Ger- 
man ships." It is hard to believe that such 
lunatic lies can come from the pen of a pro- 
fessor in good standing. 



544 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

"Ohne zu ubertreiben kann man sagen dass 
heute nur der allerkleinste Teil der deutschen 
Presse geneigt ist, den Englandern Gerech- 
tigkeit widerfahren zu lassen, bei Behandlung 
allgemeiner Fragen sich auch einmal auf den 
englischen Standpunkt der Betrachtung wenig- 
stens zeitweise zu versetzen. England ist fur 
viele 'der' Feind an sich, und ein Feind dem 
man keine Riicksichten schuldet." 

("It is no exaggeration to say that nowadays 
only the tiniest minority of the German press 
is inclined to do justice to the English by at 
least occasionally looking at questions from the 
British point of view. England is for many the 
enemy of enemies and an enemy to whom no 
consideration is due.") Thus writes one of the 
cooler heads in the Kolnische Zeitung. 

Doctor Herbert von Dirksen, of Bonn, writing 
of the Monroe Doctrine, says: "By what right 
does America attempt to check the strongest 
expansion policy of all other nations of the 
earth?" During the Boer war Germany was 
showered with post-cards and caricatures of the 
English. British soldiers with donkey heads 
marched past Queen Victoria and the Prince of 
Wales ; the venerable Queen Victoria is pictured 
plucking the tail feathers from an ostrich which 
she holds across her knees; the three generals. 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 545 

Methuen, Buller, and Gatacre, take off their 
faces to discover the heads of an ass, a sheep, and 
a cow; Chamberlain is depicted as the instigator 
of the war, with his pockets and hands full of 
African shares; a parade of the stock-exchange 
volunteers depicts them as all Jews, with the 
Prince of Wales as a Jew reviewing them; the 
Prince of Wales is pictured surrounded by vul- 
gar women, who ask, "Say, Fatty, you are not 
going to South Africa?" to which the Prince 
replies, "No, I must stay here to take care of the 
widows and orphans!" English soldiers are de- 
picted in the act of hitting and kicking women 
and children. 

In the war with Denmark in 1864 the Austrian 
navy met with a disaster at sea. A German 
publicist even then wrote: "I was grieved at 
the demonstrations of joy about this in the 
English Parliament. It was not sympathy with 
the Danes but petty spite and malice at the 
defeat of a foreign fleet. But at the same 
time it is a consolatory proof that the English 
are afraid of the future German navy." This 
quotation is interesting as showing how far back 
the quarrel dates. 

It would be merely a question of how much 
time one cares to devote to scissors and paste to 
multiply these examples of Germany's journal- 



546 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

istic and professorial state of mind. It is unfort- 
unate that some of this writing in the press is 
done by those who are often in consultation with 
the Emperor, and on some political subjects his 
advisers. I have suggested in another chapter 
that Germany suffers far more from the theoret- 
ical and book-learned gentlemen who surround 
the Emperor than from his indiscretions. In 
more than one instance his indiscretions were 
due to their blundering. Their knowledge of 
books far surpasses their knowledge of men, and 
nothing can be more dangerous to any nation 
than to be counselled and guided by pedants 
rather than by men of the world. This project- 
ing a world from the gaseous elements of one's 
own cranium and dealing with that world, in- 
stead of the world that exists, is a danger to 
everybody concerned. 

" Bedauernswert sei es allerdings, dass wir in 
unserem politischen Leben nicht mit gentlemen 
zu thun haben, dies sei aber ein Begriff der uns 
iiberhaupt abgehe," writes Prince Hohenlohe 
in his memoirs. ("It is of all things most to be 
regretted that in our political life we do not have 
gentlemen to deal with, but this is a conception 
of which we are totally deficient.") 

A daring colonial secretary, speaking in the 
Reichstag of certain scandals in the German 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 547 

colonies, said bluntly: "A reprehensible caste 
feeling has grown up in our colonies, the concep- 
tion of a gentleman being in England different 
from that in Germany." 

When Lord Haldane came to Berlin, on his 
mission to discover if possible a working basis 
for more friendly relations between the two 
countries, his eyes were greeted in the windows 
of every book-shop with books and pamphlets 
with such titles as "Krieg oder Frieden mit Eng- 
land," "Das Perfide Albion," "Deutschland und 
der Islam," "1st England kriegslustig," "Deuts- 
chland sei Wach," "England's Weltherrschaft 
und die deutsche Luxusflotte," "John Bull und 
wir," and a long list of others, all written and 
advertised to keep alive in the German people a 
sense of their natural antagonism to England. 

During the last year the "Letters of Berg- 
mann" brought up again the controversy, that 
should have been left to die, over the treatment 
of the Emperor Friedrich by an English surgeon. 

In discussing Senator Lodge's resolution before 
the United States Senate, on the Monroe Doc- 
trine, the German press spoke of us as "hirnver- 
brannte Yankees," "bornierte Yankeegehirne " 
("crazy Yankees," "provincial Yankee intel- 
lects"); and the words "Dollarika," "Dollarei," 
and "Dollarman" are further malicious expres- 



548 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

sions of their envy, frequentlj^ used. The Ger- 
mans are persistently taught that there are 
neither scholars nor students in America or in 
England. One worthy writes: "Die Englander 
lernen nichts. Der Sport lasst ihnen keine 
Zeit dazu. Man ist hinterher auch zu miide." 

I am always very glad, when I happen to be 
in Europe, that I belong to a nation that can 
afford to take these flings with the greatest good- 
humor. As the burly soldier replied when ques- 
tioned in court as to why he allowed his small 
wife to beat him: "It pleases her and it don't 
hurt I." 

This struggle for recognition as a great nation, 
to be received on equal terms by the rest of us, 
has upset the nerves of certain classes in Ger- 
many, and among them the untravelled and 
small-town-dwelling professor. 

I am a craftsman in letters myself, in a small 
way, but I am no believer that books are the 
only key to life, or the only way to find a solution 
for its riddles and problems. Life is language, 
and books only the dictionaries; men are the 
text, books only the commentaries. Books are 
only good as a filter for actual experiences. A 
man must have a rich and varied experience of 
men and women before he can use books to ad- 
vantage. Life is varied, men and women many. 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 549 

while the individual life is short; wise men read 
books, therefore, to enrich their experience, not 
merely as the pedant does, to garner facts. 
*' J'etudie les livres en attendant que j'etudie les 
hommes," writes Voltaire. "Books are good 
enough in their own way, but they are a mighty 
bloodless substitute for life," writes Stevenson. 

Montgolfier sees a woman's skirt drying and 
notices that the hot air fills it and lifts it, and 
this gives him the idea for a balloon. 

Denis Papin sees the cover lifted from a pot 
by the steam, and there follow the myriad in- 
ventions in which steam is the driving power. 

Newton, dozing under an apple-tree, is hit on 
the head by a falling apple, and there follows 
the law of gravitation. 

Franklin flies a kite, and a shock of electricity 
starts him upon the road to his discoveries. 

Archimedes in his bath notices that his body 
seems to grow lighter, and there follows the 
great law which bears his name. 

These are the foundation-stones upon which 
the whole house of science is built, and no one 
of them was dug out of a book. Charlemagne 
could not read, and Napoleon, when he left school 
for Paris, carried the recommendation from his 
master that he might possibly become a fair 
officer of marines, but nothing more! A capital 



550 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

example of the ability of the man of books to 
measure the abilities of the man of the world. 

Reading and writing are modern accomplish- 
ments, and we grossly exaggerate their impor- 
tance as man-makers. That, it has always been 
my contention, is the fatal fallacy of modern 
education, and you may see it carried to its 
extreme in Germany, for men who have not 
lived broadly are merely hampered by books. 
It is as though one studied a primer with an 
etymological dictionary at his side. • Germans 
are renowned writers of commentaries, but you 
cannot deal with men and with life by the aid of 
commentaries. Exegesis solves no international 
quarrels, and the mastery of men is not gained 
with dictionaries and grammars. 

We are all prone to forget the end in the means, 
for the end is far away and the means right under 
our noses. We all recognize, when we are pulled 
up short and made to think, that, after all, the 
arts and letters, religion and philosophy and 
statecraft, are for one ultimate purpose, which is 
to develop the complete man. Everything must 
be measured by its man-making power. Ideas 
that do not grow men are sterile seed. Men who 
do not move other men to action and to growth 
are not to be excused because they stir men to 
the merely pleasant tickling of thinking lazily 



*'FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 551 

and feeling softly. Thus Lincoln was a greater 
man than Emerson; Bismarck a greater than 
Lessing; Cromwell a greater than Bunyan; Na- 
poleon a greater than Corneille and Racine; 
Pericles greater than Plato; and Csesar greater 
than Virgil. 

The man who only makes maps for the mind 
is only half a man, until his thinking, his influ- 
ence, his dreams and enthusiasms take on the 
potency of a man and come into action. Even if 
men of action do evil, as some of those I mention 
have done, they have translated theories into pal- 
pable things that permit men to judge whether 
they be good or bad ; and the really great artists, 
thinkers, and saints are as fertile as though 
they were female, and gave birth to living 
things. Their thinking is a form of action. The 
real test of successful organization is the thor- 
oughness of the thinking behind it; on the other 
hand, the only test of thinking is the success of 
the thought in actual execution, and the Germans 
often take this too much for granted. We really 
know and hold as an inalienable intellectual pos- 
session only what we have gained by our own 
effort, and with a certain degree of actual exer- 
tion. People who have never worked out their 
own salvation always join, at last, that large class 
in the body politic who don't know what they 



55^ GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

want, and who will never be happy till they 
get it. 

When it comes to dealing with inanimate 
things, books of rules are invaluable. Hence, in 
chemistry, physics, archaeology, philology, exe- 
gesis, the Germans have forged ahead; their 
intellectual street-cleaning is unsurpassed; but 
the ship of state needs not only men to take ob- 
servations and to read charts, but men to trim 
the sails to the fitful breezes, the blustering 
winds, the tempests and the changing currents 
of life. They must know, too, the methods, the 
manners, the habits of other men who sail the 
seas of life. It is just here that the German fails; 
he lacks the confidence of experience, and bursts 
into bluster and bravado. He is a believer in 
vicarious experience, and is as little likely to be 
saved by it, in this world at least, as he is by 
vicarious sacrifice. 

His imagination does not make allowances for 
either England or America. He does not see, 
for example, that the Monroe Doctrine is not 
open for discussion for the simple reason that 
America has announced it as American policy; 
just as Prussia took part three times in the dis- 
memberment of Poland ; just as Prussia pounced 
upon Silesia; just as Germany took Alsace- 
Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein and Frankfort, and 
held the ring while Austria-Hungary bagged 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 553 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, and by the word of 
her Emperor, promised to do the same thing 
for Russia, when Japan declared war against 
her. We have decided that we will have no 
European sovereignty in South America, and 
this side war, that is the end of the matter, call 
it the Monroe Doctrine or what you will. It 
only makes for uneasiness and bad temper to 
discuss it. It is the national American policy. 
It may be right or wrong theoretically, but in- 
ternational law has nothing to do with it. The 
German professors who discuss it from that 
stand-point, are beating the air and raising a 
dust in the world's international drawing-room. 
This German mania for translating facts back 
into philosophy and then dancing through a dis- 
cussion of theories is not understood, much less 
appreciated, by the rest of the world. We can 
never get on if we are to introduce the discussion 
of the lines of every new battle-ship by argu- 
ments as to the sea-worthiness of the ark. Those 
of us who control a quarter of the habitable 
globe, and the inhabitants thereof, are much too 
busy to discuss the legal aspects of the land- 
grabbing of the Pharaohs. Geography is not 
metaphysics, but it is wof ully hard for the pro- 
fessorial mind to grasp this. 

"Given a mouse's tail, and he will guess 
With metaphysic quickness at the mouse." 



554 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

In much the same way German statesmen and 
the German press do not understand, or do not 
care to understand, that British statesmen when 
they speak in the House of Commons, or when 
they go to the country asking increased appro- 
priations for the navy, must give some reason 
for their request. There is only one reason, and 
that is that there is a growing navy across the 
North Sea, which, whether now it is or is not a 
menace, may be a menace to their ship-fed island, 
and they must have ships and men and guns 
enough to guard the sea-lanes which their food- 
laden ships must sail through. 

They may be awkward sometimes in their 
expression of this self-evident fact, they may call 
their own fleet a necessity and the other fleet a 
luxury, but that is a negligible question of verbal 
manners ; the fact remains that their fleet is, and 
all the world knows it is, and it is laughable to 
discuss it, the prime necessity of their existence. 

As long as we Christians have given up any 
shred of belief in Christian ethics, as applicable 
to international disputes, we must live by the 
law of the strongest. We do not bless the poor 
in spirit, but the self-confident; we do not bless 
the meek, but the proud; we do not bless the 
peace-makers, but those who urge us to prepare 
for war; we do not bless the reviled and the 
persecuted and the slandered, but those who 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 555 

revolt against injustice and tyranny; we do not 
approve the cutting off of tlie right hand, but 
admire the mailed fist; and it is only adding to 
the confusion to raise millions for war ourselves, 
and then to present a handsomely bound copy 
of the Beatitudes to our rivals. 

I shall be wantonly misunderstood if these 
reflections be taken as a criticism of Germany. 
This situation involves Germany in censure no 
more than other nations. It is only that Ger- 
many shows herself to be somewhat childish and 
peevishly provincial, in girding at an unchange- 
able situation, either in South America or in the 
North Sea. 

This is not altogether Germany's fault. She 
is suffering from growing pains, and from grave 
internal unrest. She is only just of age as a 
nation, and her constitution is so inflexible that 
it is a constant source of irritation. She is 
governed by an autocracy, and the two strongest 
parties numerically in her Reichstag are the 
party of the Catholics and the party of the 
Socialists. She has built up a tremendous trade 
on borrowed capital, and every gust of wind in 
the money market makes her fidgety. Her 
population increases at the rate of some 800,000 
a year, but her educational system produces such 
a surplus of laborers who wish to work in uni- 



556 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

forms, or in black coats and stiff collars, that 
there is a dearth of agricultural laborers, and she 
imports 700,000 Hungarians, Poles, Slavs, and 
Italians every year to harvest her crops. 

This same system of education has taught 
youths to think for themselves before either the 
mental or moral muscles are tough enough, with 
the result that she is the agnostic and material- 
istic nation of Europe, and her capital the most 
licentious and immoral in Europe. 

This is the result of secular education every- 
where. Freedom of thought, yes, but not free- 
dom of thought any more than freedom of 
morals, or freedom of manners, or political free- 
dom, in extreme youth; that only makes for 
anarchy political, mental, and moral. 

There is much undigested, not to say indigest- 
ible, republicanism about just now in China 
and in Portugal, for example; just as there are 
materialism and agnosticism in Germany and in 
France, not due to super-intellectualism but to 
juvenile thinking. The Chinese are just as fit 
for a republic — an actual republic is still a long 
way off — as are callow German youths, and 
notoriety-loving French students, for freedom to 
disbelieve and to destroy. No country can long 
survive a majority of women teachers in the 
public schools, together with no Bible and no 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 557 

religious teaching there. I have no prejudices 
favoring orthodoxy, but I have a fairly wide 
experience which has given me one article of a 
creed that I would go to the stake for, and that 
is that it is of all crimes the worst to give free- 
dom political, moral, or religious to those who 
are unprepared for it. x/ 

Germany's taste in literature, once so natural 
and healthy, has become morbid, and Suder- 
mann and Gorky and Oscar Wilde, and the rest 
of the unhealthy crew who swarm about the 
morgues, the dissecting-rooms, and the houses of 
assignation of life, the internuntiata lihidinum, 
the leering conciliatrices of the dark streets, are 
her favorites now. There is no surer sign of 
mental ill-health than a taste for lowering litera- 
ture, an appetite for this self-dissecting, this 
complacent, self-contemplating form of intel- 
lectual exercise. f 

This is no heated assault on German culture. 
It is a natural phase of development. Youthful 
candidates for worldliness all go through this 
pornocratic stage. "The impudence of the bawd 
is modesty, compared with that of the convert," 
writes the Marquis of Halifax. The German 
professor and the German bourgeois in their 
Rake's Progress are only a little more awkward, 
a little more heavy-handed, a little coarser in 



558 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

speecli, than others, that is all. / The period of 
twenty-five years during which I have known 
Germany has developed before my eyes the con- 
comitants of vast and rapid industrial and com- 
mercial progress, and they are: a love of luxury, 
a great increase in gambling, a materialistic tone 
of mind, a wide-spread increase of immorality, 
and a tendency to send culture to the mint, and 
to the market-place to be stamped, so that it may 
^ be readily exchanged for the means of soft living. 1 
These internal changes account to some extent 
for her restless external policy. A man's diges- 
tion has a good deal to do with the color of the 
world when he looks at it. There is more yellow 
in life from biliousness, than from the state of 
the atmosphere. 

Aside from these domestic causes there is no 
reason why Germany should take a sentimental 
or pious view of these questions of international 
amity. Her own history is development by war. 
*'Any war is a good war when it is undertaken 
to increase the power of the state," said Frederick 
the Great. "Nur das Volk wird eine gesicherte 
Steliung in der Welt haben, das von kriegerischen 
Geiste erfiillt ist" ("Only that nation will hold 
a safe place in the world which is imbued with a 
warlike spirit") writes Germany's great military 
philosopher Clausewitz. 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 559 

We took Cuba and the Philippines; England 
took India, Hong Kong, and Egypt; Japan took 
Korea and southern Manchuria; Italy took 
Tripoli; France took Fez; Russia took Finland 
and northern Manchuria; Austria-Hungary took 
Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Prussia and Ger- 
many have a long list, including Silesia, Poland, 
Hanover, and Alsace-Lorraine. Austria-Hun- 
gary tears up the Berlin treaty; France, Ger- 
many, and Spain tear up the Algeciras treaty; 
Italy tears up the treaty of Paris; and it is 
part of the game that we should all hold up our 
hands, avert our faces, and thank God that 
we are not as other men are, when these things 
are done. The justifications of these actions 
are all of the most pious and penitent descrip- 
tion. We were forced to do so, we say, in order 
to hasten the bringing in of our own specially 
patented and exclusive style of the kingdom 
of heaven, but outside of perhaps India and 
Egypt, and the Philippines, it would be hard 
to find to-day any trace of the promised king- 
dom. Germany, for example, had nine per cent, 
of Moroccan trade, the total of Moroccan trade 
with all countries only amounted to $27,500,000 
a year, and she was compelled to interfere for the 
protection of her traders, forsooth! The out- 
come of the business, after an exciting situation 
lasting for months, was that Germany got a slice 



v~ 



560 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of territory from France, mostly swamps, which 
reaches from the Congo to the Atlantic Ocean, 
and reported to be, by her own engineers, unin- 
habitable. 

It is the pleasant formula of polite statesmen 
and politicians to say, that it is a pity that Ger- 
many came into the world competition a hun- 
dred years too late, when the best colonies had 
been parcelled out among the other powers. 
This is a superficial view of the case, and misses 
the real point of the present envy, hatred, malice, 
and uncharitableness. Germany does not want 
colonies, and has no ability of the proper kind, 
and no willing and adventurous population to 
settle them, if she had. Prussia's dealing with 
aborigines is a subject for comic opera. 

Germany came into the modern world as a 
dreamer, as a maker of melodies, as a singer of 
songs, as a sort of post-graduate student in 
philosophy and in theoretical, and later applied 
science. She introduced us to classical philology, 
to modern methods of historical research, to the 
comparative study of ethnic religions, to daring 
and scholarly exegesis, to the study of the science 
of language. She discovered Shakespeare to the 
English; Eduard Matzner and Eduard Miiller, 
and German scholars in the study of phonetics, 
have written our English grammars and ety- 
mological dictionaries for us, and helped to lay 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 561 

the foundations for knowledge of our own lan- 
guage. Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, one need not 
mention more, attempted to pass beyond the 
bounds of human experience and to formulate 
laws for the process; Schleiermacher, maintain- 
ing that Christian faith is a condition of devout 
feeling, a fact of inward experience, an object 
which may be observed and described, had an 
unbounded influence in America, and many are 
the ethical discourses I have listened to which 
owed more to Schleiermacher than to their au- 
thors. Humboldt, Liebig, Bunsen, Helmholtz, 
Johannes Miiller, Von Baer, Virchow, Koch, 
Diesel, even the British and American man in the 
street, with little interest in such matters, knows 
some of these names; while Schopenhauer and 
Nietzsche are symbols of revolt, whose names 
are flung into an argument by many who only 
know their names, but who fondly suppose that 
the one stands for despair and suicide, and the 
other for the joy and unbridled license of the 
strong man. 

Reckoning by epochs, it was only yesterday 
that Germany said to the world: "No more of 
this!" 

"Hang up philosophy! 
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, 
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, 
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more!" 



562 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Of a sudden our scholar threw off his gown 
and cap, and said: "I propose to play base-ball 
and foot-ball with you, I propose to have a hand 
in the material spoils of life, I propose to have a 
seat at the banquet and to propose toasts and 
to be toasted!" Faust of a sudden left his 
gloomy, cobwebby laboratory, flung a fine cloak 
over his shoulders, stuck a dandy feather in his 
cap, buckled on a rapier, and began roistering 
with the best of us. We sneered and smiled at 
first, let us be frank and admit it. We did not 
think much of this new buck. We had little 
fear that the professor, even if he took off his 
spectacles and slippers and dressing-gown, and 
exchanged his pipe for a cigarette, would cut 
much of a figure as a lover. He was new to the 
game, we were old hands at it, but the first thing 
we knew he had given the world's mistress, 
France, a scolding, and flung her into a corner, 
a cowering heap of outraged finery; and she has 
only been safe ever since in the role of a sort of 
mistress of England on board-wages. 

A new cock in the barn-yard is never received 
with great cordiality. He must win his place and 
his power with his beak and his spurs. We all 
of us had enough to do before this fellow came 
along. We are a little jealous of him, we are all 
uneasier because he is about, and he has done so 
well at our games, now that he has indeed hung 



*'FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 563 

up philosophy, that we are not even sure that it 
is safe to take him on in a serious match. We 
have endeavored, therefore, to keep him occupied 
with his own neighbors, to whom we have ex- 
tended our best wishes and our moral backing, 
which is known as keeping the balance of power 
in Europe. / 

But a new Germany has come into the world. 
Germany nowadays has a large class, as have 
the rest of us, who belong to that increasing 
number of extraordinary people who want money 
without even knowing how to get on without it. 
The only satisfactory test of the right to wealth 
is the ability to get on without it. One of mod- 
ern civilization's most dangerous pitfalls is the 
subversive doctrine that all men shall have 
wealth, even before they have proved their 
ability to do without it. Germany is gradually 
arriving at this puny stage of culture, whose be- 
ginnings may be said to date from that ominous 
year for culture, 1492, when Lorenzo di Medici 
died and Columbus discovered America! 

During all this time statesmen have insisted 
that there is no good reason why Germany and 
England should not be on good terms; gentle- 
men of various trades and professions from both 
countries, speaking halting English or embar- 
rassed German, as the case may be, cross each 



564 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

other's boundaries, comment upon the beauties 
of the respective countries, and overeat them- 
selves in ponderous endeavors to appear cordial 
and appreciative. Mayors and aldermen swap 
stories and compliments over turtle and sherry, 
or over sauerkraut and Johannisberger; bands of 
students visit Oxford or Heidelberg, and there is 
a chorus of praise of Goethe from one side, of 
Shakespeare from the other; and all the while 
there is an unceasing antiphonal of grimaces and 
abuse in the press. Not even when Germany 
exports her latest stage novelties to London, and 
pantomimic platitudes are dandled under colored 
lights, does the turmoil of martial talk cease. 
Not even Teutonic lechery, in the guise of Rein- 
hartian art, dressed in nothing but silence, and 
making faces at the British censor on the boards 
of the music-halls, avails anything. ^' 
/ Of course all this is nuts to the irresponsible 

journalists, to the manufacturers of powder, 
guns, and ships, and to politicians and diplomats 
out of employment; but it is hard on the tax- 
payer, who has no dividends from manufacturers 
of lethal weapons and ships, nor from news- 
papers, and no notoriety from the self-imposed 
jobs of the unofficial diplomats. 

Perhaps of all these factors the press, in its 
I wild gamble to make money out of sensational- 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 565 

ism, is most to blame. The press, for the sake of 
gain, has soiled and soured the milk of human 
kindness by exposing it, carelessly and unceas- 
ingly, to the pathogenic dangers of the dust of 
the street and the gutter. It is wholly unfitting 
and always demoralizing when the priest, the 
politician, and the journalist turn their attention 
to private gain. Any one of these three who 
makes a great fortune out of his profession is 
damned by that fact alone. The only payment, 
beyond a living, that these three should look 
to is, respect, consideration, and the honor of 
serving the state unselfishly and wisely. The 
world will be all the happier when there are no 
more Shylocks permitted in any of these pro- 
fessions. 

Germany is autocratic, philosophical, and con- 
tinental; England is democratic, political, and in- 
sular. It is hopeless to suppose that the great 
mass of the people of one country will understand 
the other, and, for this is the important point, 
it is wholly unnecessary. 

We get on best and with least friction with 
people whom we do not understand in the least. 
A man may have known and liked people with 
whose aims, opinions, employment, creeds he 
has the smallest sympathy. One may mention 
such diverse personalities as John L. Sullivan, 



A 



566 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the prize-fighter. Cardinal Rampolla, Mr. Roose- 
velt, Doctor Jameson, the Kaiser, President 
Diaz of Mexico, numerous Jew financiers. Lord 
Haldane the scholar-statesman, and a long list of 
professors, pious priests, sportsmen, and idlers, 
not to speak of Hindus and Mohammedans, 
Japanese and Chinese, and half a dozen Sioux 
chiefs. With these gentlemen, a few of many 
with whom one may have been upon such pleas- 
ant terms that they have even confided in him 
and trusted him with their secrets, one may have 
passed many pleasant hours. It probably never 
entered such a man's head to wonder whether 
they liked him, and he never discussed with them 
the question of his liking for them. We get on 
by keeping our own personalities, prejudices, and 
creeds intact. There is no other way. 

Other men will give even a more diverse list 
of friends and acquaintances, and never for a 
moment dream that there is any mystery in be- 
ing friends with all. Nothing is ever gained by 
flattery. To the serious man flattery in the 
form of sincere praise makes him more respon- 
sible and only sadder, because he knows how 
much he falls below what is expected of him, and 
what he expects of himself. Lip-flattery makes 
a real man feel as though his sex had been mis- 
taken, he feels as though he had been given 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 567 

curling-tongs instead of a razor for his morning 
toilet. These pompous flatteries that pass be- 
tween Germany and England to-day, make both 
sides self-conscious and a little ashamed to write 
and to speak them, and to hear and applaud 
them. 

America and England are shortly to celebrate 
the signing of the treaty of Ghent, which marks a 
hundred years of peace between the two nations. 
We have not been without opportunities to quar- 
rel. We have whole classes of people in America 
who detest England, and in England there are 
not a few who do not conceal successfully their 
contempt for America, but we have had peace, 
and since England, at the time of our war with 
Spain, said "Hands off!" to the powers that 
wished to interfere, there has been a great in- 
crease of friendly feeling. But there has been 
little or no flattery passing back and forth. We 
have sent ambassador after ambassador to Eng- 
land who were almost more American than the 
Americans. Phelps and Lowell and Hay and 
Choate and Reid were all American in name, in 
tradition, in their successes, and in their way of 
looking at life. By their learning, their wit, and 
their criticisms, by their writing and speaking, 
by their presentation of the claims to greatness 
of our great men, by their unhesitating avowal 



568 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in public and in private of their allegiance to the 
ideals of the republic they served, they have 
made clear the American point of view. Above 
all, they have shown their pride in their own 
country by acknowledging and praising the great 
qualities of England and the English. There has 
been no fulsome flattery, no bowing the knee to 
foreign idols, and what has been the result.^ 
The American ambassador for years has been 
the most popular diplomatic figure in Great 
Britain. An increasing number of Englishmen 
even, nowadays, know who Washington and 
Jefferson and Lincoln were, and our understand- 
ing of one another has grown rapidly out of this 
frank and manly attitude. We were jealous and 
suspicious a hundred years ago, as are England 
and Germany to-day, but we have changed all 
that by our attitude of good-humored indepen- 
dence, and by eliminating altogether from our 
intercourse the tainted delicacy of compliment, 
and the canting endearments of the diplomatic 
cocotte. We have emphasized our differences to 
the great benefit of the fine qualities that we 
have and cherish in common. 

The individual Protestant does not dislike the 
individual Papist, half so much as he disHkes his 
neighbor in the next pew, who refuses Sunday 
after Sunday to repeat the service and the creed 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 569 

at the same pace as the others, and hence to 
"descend into Hell" with the rest of the congre- 
gation. The Sioux chief was far more annoyed 
by his neighbor of the same tribe in the next- 
door reservation than he was by me. The 
pugilist scorned "Tug" Wilson, a brother fisti- 
cuffs sovereign, but had no feeling against his 
parish priest. Theological protagonists are 
notoriously bitter against one another, but we 
have all found many of them amiable compan- 
ions ourselves. It is the fellow next door, who 
wears purple socks, or who parts his hair in the 
middle, or who wears his coat-sleeves longer than 
our tailor cuts ours, or who eats his soup with a 
noise, or who has damp hands, or talks through 
his nose, who irritates us and makes us wish 
occasionally for the unlimited club-using free- 
dom of the stone age. It is your first cousin with 
incurable catarrh, and a slender income who is 
too much with you, and who spoils your temper, 
not the anarchist orator who threatens your 
property and almost your life. 

"What do these Germans want?" asked a 
distinguished cabinet minister of me. "They 
want consideration," I replied, "which is the 
most difficult thing in the world for the English- 
man to offer anybody." "But, you don't mean 
to say," he continued, "that they really want to 



V 



570 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cut our throats on account of our bad manners?" 
I cannot phrase it better, nor can I give a more 
illuminating illustration of the misunderstand- 
ing. That is exactly the reason, and the para- 
mount reason, why nations and why individuals 
attempt to cut one another's throats. Whatever 
the fundamental differences may have been that 
have led to war between nations, the tiny spark 
that started the explosion has always been some 
phase of rudeness or bad manners. 

Counting my school-days, I can remember 
about a dozen personal conflicts in which I have 
engaged, with pardonable pleasure. Not one of 
them was a question of territory, or religious 
difference, or of racial hatred; indeed, the last 
one was due to being shouldered in the street 
when my equanimity was already disturbed by 
a lingering recovery from a feverish cold. 

It is, after all, the little differences that count. 
If politically and socially Germany were a little 
more sure of herself, if she were not ever omnia 
tula timens Dido; and if England were not as 
ever quite so sure of herself, I believe inter- 
course between them would be less strained. 

"The little gnat-like buzzings shrill, 
The hurdy-gurdies of the street, 
The common curses of the will — 

These wrap the cerements round our feet." 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 571 

The smothered voice, the tepid manner, the 
affected and hesitating under-statement, of a 
certain middhsh class of EngHsh men and women, 
and, alas, their American imitators, who are 
striving toward their comical interpretation of 
the Vere de Vere manner, are the promoters of 
guffaws in private, and uneasiness in public, be- 
tween nations, to a far greater extent than the 
bold individualist, whose voice and manners, y 
good or bad, are all his own. ^ It is these small 
attritions that wear us down, and produce a sub- 
acid dislike between nations as between indi- 
viduals. It is these that prepare the ground for 
a fine crop of misunderstandings. ^ 

But are we not to know our neighbors the 
English, the Germans, the French? I for one 
consider that not to know German and Germany, 
for example, is nowadays not to be fully educated. 
Most of us, however, have had our nerves un- 
strung by the speeding-up process that has 
gone on all over the world of late. We have lost 
somewhat the power to know people and to let 
them alone at the same time. Goethe, one of 
the coolest and wisest of men, maintains: "Cer- 
tain defects are necessary for the existence of 
individuality. One would not be pleased if old 
friends were to lay aside certain peculiarities." 

We should at least give every man as fair a 



572 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

chance to receive our good opinion as we give a 
picture. We should put him in a good Hght 
before we criticise him. We should take time 
enough to do that to other nations, as well as to 
individuals. I have always had much sympathy 
for a certain Roman general. He was blind, 
and a painter who painted him with two large 
eyes, he rebuked; another painter, who painted 
him in profile, he rewarded. 

It is, after all, something of an art to know 
people, so that the knowledge is serviceable, so 
that you can depict them to yourself and to 
others, not as they are as opposed to you, but 
as they are as a complement and help to you. 

"No human quality is so well wove 
In warp and woof, but there's some flaw in it; 
I've known a brave man fly a shepherd's cur, 
A wise man so demean himself, drivelling idiocy 
Had wellnigh been ashamed on't. For your 

crafty, 
Your worldly-wise man, he, above the rest. 
Weaves his own snares so fine, he's often 

caught in them." 

He who does not make allowances for weaknesses 
and differences in his study of human affairs is 
still in the infant class. It is a grave danger to 
every state that critics, smart or shallow, with 
their tu quoque weapons, their silly ridicule. 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 573 

their emphasis upon dijfferences as though they 
were disasters, their constant failure to recognize 
the value of certain weaknesses, their stupidity 
in not painting great men who happen to be 
blind, in profile, and their harping upon the 
flaws, and their neglect of the fine texture of 
human qualities that are strange to them, that 
these critics are not muzzled, or, if that is im- 
possible, disregarded. A 

They make it appear that amicable relations 
between nations are next to impossible. If you 
escape one danger of offending, you are sure to 
give offence in some other way, they seem to say. 
They are hysterical in their self-consciousness, 
"as if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met 
him, or went in the house and leaned his hand 
on the wall and a serpent bit him." Sir Edward 
Grey writes on this subject: "I sometimes think 
that half the difficulties of foreign policy arise 
from the exceeding ingenuity of different coun- 
tries in attributing motives and intentions to 
the governments of each other. As far as I can 
observe, the press of various countries is much 
more fertile in inventing motives and intentions 
for the governments of the different countries 
than the foreign ministers of these countries 
are themselves. Foreign governments and our 
own government live from hand to mouth and 



574 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

have fewer deep plans than people might sup- 
pose. There is an old warning that you should 
not spend too much time in looking at the dark 
cupboard for the black cat that is not there, and 
I think if sometimes we were a little less suspi- 
cious of deep design or motive that the affairs 
of the world would progress more smoothly." 

The trouble lies in our undertaking the im- 
possible, to the neglect of the obvious and the 
possible. The basic fact of nationality is a pref- 
erence for our own ways, customs, and habits 
over those of other people. If the Chinese and 
Japanese, the Servians and Albanians, the Eng- 
lish and the Germans liked one another as well 
as they like their own, there would be no nation- 
alism to protect or to preserve. Such racial and 
traditional liking of nation for nation is impos- 
sible of achievement. No journeyings, speechi- 
fyings, banquets, or compliments will bring it 
about. On the contrary, I am not sure that it 
is not these very differences which cheer us and 
give us a new flavor in our pleasure in living, 
when we cross the Atlantic, the Channel, or the 
Rhine. What we should strive for is not social 
and racial absorption, but social and racial dif- 
ference and distinction, with that pride in our 
own which jnakes for patience in the under- 
standing of others. 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 575 

It is the petty, self-conscious American who 
hates the Enghsh, the provincial Englishman 
who hates the German, the socially insecure 
German who hates the Frenchman, the English- 
man, and the American. Those of us who are 
poised, secure, satisfied, and at bottom proud of 
our race, our breeding, and our country, are 
neither irritable nor irritating in the matter of 
international relations. We have enough to do, 
and let others alone. Let us dine one another, 
criticise one another in the effort to improve 
ourselves, praise one another where the praise 
serves to establish our own ideals; but let us give 
up this forced and awkward courting by banquets, 
deputations, and conferences. Let us study the 
great art of leaving one another alone. This is 
a time-hallowed doctrine. The greatest of all 
satirists and critics of manners knew this secret of 
successful intercourse with one another. One of 
the characters in the "Frogs" of Aristophanes is 
made to say: "Don't come trespassing upon my 
mind; you have a house of your own." Pro- 
pinquity does not necessarily entail intimacy; 
as the world grows smaller, more and more 
people think so, perhaps often enough only to 
escape from themselves, a favorite form of elope- 
ment these days. Some men are fed by solitude 
and starved by too much companionship, and 



576 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the same is true of nations. You cannot control 
others till you have learned to control yourself, 
or save another till you yourself are saved, and 
most of us had better be about that business. 

yV It is England's business to know just now, and 
to some extent ours, how many ships Germany 
is building and how many men she has in train- 
ing to man them; but it is not in the least any- 
body's business to question her motives or to 
attempt to dictate her policy. It is our business 
to shut up, and to build ships and to train men 
according to our notions of what is necessary 
for safety in case of an explosion. We should 
be about our father's business, not about our 
brother's business. 

It is shallow thinking and lack of knowledge 
of the men and women of stranger countries, and 
above all that terrible itching to be doing some- 
thing, which lead to these futile excursions and 
this silly talk. 

^ Can anything be more maudlin than to sup- 

pose that international sensitiveness, that com- 
mercial rivalries, that tariff discriminations, that 
territorial misunderstandings, are to be soothed 
and smoothed away, by dissertations upon how 
much we owe to one another in matters of cult- 
ure? Think what we owe to Goethe and Les- 
sing, to Spinoza and Kant, to Heine and Mozart 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 577 

and Wagner and Beethoven, reiterates the Eng- 
Hshman; think what we owe to Shakespeare and 
Milton, to Byron and Shelley and Scott, to Lister 
and Newton, answers the German ! Who can 
go to war with the countrymen of Racine and 
Moliere and Pascal and Montesquieu and Des- 
cartes? repeats the friend of France; and by 
others are trumpeted the fraternal relations that 
we ought to cultivate with the countrymen of 
Dante, or of Euripides, ^Eschylus, and Sophocles. 
This is phantom friendship, and we all know in 
our heart of hearts, that we would fight any or 
all of them at the drop of a handkerchief, if they 
hurt our feelings, ruffled our national pride, or 
maltreated in a foreign land the meanest of our 
racial brothers. Straining after such artificial 
bonds of union is as irritating as it is unreal. 

Germany has few heartier admirers of Bis- 
marck than am I-; England has few franker 
friends of her great gentlemen in peace and war 
than am I; I have read and profited by French 
literature far more than from anything America 
has produced; if I can write so that here and 
there a brother has profited therefrom, I owe 
it to the Frenchmen I have studied; but these 
are all nothing as compared with my heart's real 
allegiances. There is a gulp in my throat when 
I dream of that weary, misunderstood, but pa- 



578 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

tient and humble peace-maker, who held the 
scales between the millions of my own country- 
men, shooting and stabbing one another to death 
fifty years ago. No other man can be quite like 
him to me; he remains my master of men, as is 
Lee my ideal of the Happy Warrior. I under- 
stand the grim humor in his sad eyes, I love that 
lined face, cut from the granite of self-control, 
that tamed volcano face, seamed and scarred by 
the lava of his trials and his tears ; I can see how 
the illuminating and conciliatory anecdotes were 
his relief from the pain of an aching heart; my 
muscles harden and my nerves tingle as I recall 
the puppet politicians and fancy self -advertising 
warriors who crucified him slowly. The coun- 
try and the people that Lincoln believed in, I 
must believe in and fight for too. Washington 
was an Englishman and baptized us, but Lin- 
coln was an American who officiated at our first 
communion as a united people. 

I ask no Englishman, no German, no French- 
man to agree with me, but I ask them to leave 
me alone with my dead, to leave me in peace 
with my living problems, to force no artificial 
friendships upon me, and thus to let our respect 
for one another increase naturally. 

Has the Englishman, has the German, no 
sanctuaries to be left undisturbed; no heart- 



*'FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 579 

strings that are not to be fumbled at by busy 
fingers; no personal dignities to be shrouded from 
investigations; no sweet silences of sorrow that 
are barred to foreign mourners? If he have not, 
then all this clamor at the doors of national 
privacy is well enough; but let them remember 
that when nations lose their dignity and their ra- 
cial pride, there is sure to follow the squabbling 
and the jealousy, the rough speech and vulgar 
manners, of the domestic circle, in the same 
plight of spiritual shamelessness. The best that 
any of us learn is to be a little more patient, a 
little more charitable, a httle more careful of the 
dignity of others in our own homes, or abroad, 
and then the light goes out! 



XI 

CONCLUSION 

CRITICISM is temptingly easy when it 
consists, as it so often does, in merely 
noting what is different, or what is not 
there. Helpful criticism I take to be the dis- 
covery of what is there, and its revelation, with 
an examination of its history, its truth, and its 
value. That kind of criticism is close to creation 
itself, and few there are sufficiently self-sacrific- 
ing to endow and to train themselves to under- 
take it. 

It makes life very complicated to think too 
much about it, but to take a step further, and to 
attempt to apply logic to life, that way madness 
V lies, i It is of the very essence of life that things 
are never as they ought to be, but only as they 
can be for the time being. We may be opti- 
mistic enough to believe that this is a good world, 
but it is none the less true that unbending virtue 
seldom receives the temporal rewards for which 
most of us are striving, and with which alone 

most of us are content. We are forced to doubt, 

580 



CONCLUSION 581 

therefore, the goodness which finds Kfe easy and 
comfortable, and since we must still at all haz- 
ards be charitable in our judgments of one an- 
other, we become, most of us, opportunists in 
morals. 

In dealing with the men, manners, affairs, and 
the soul of a stranger people, therefore, one must 
use what experience, knowledge, good-humor, 
and impartiality one has, without assumption of 
superiority, without making high demands, and 
without ceasing to be at least as opportunist as 
we are at home. Because things are different, 
they are not necessarily better or worse, and if 
certain things are not there, it is perhaps be- 
cause they do not belong there. Above all, we 
should refrain from applying a stern logic to the 
life of another country which we never use in 
measuring our own. 

The whole north of Germany is a flat, barren 
plain, with the Elbe, the Oder, the Weser flowing 
west and north. The north of Germany on a 
raised map looks like a vast sea-shore, and so it 
is. To the south a great river, the Rhine, 
pierces its way from Frankfort through a beau- 
tiful gorge in the mountains, and has its source 
near that of the Danube. Barbarossa called this 
river, "that royal street." This sea-shore is cul- 
tivated and populous; this river has been made a 



582 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

great commercial highway. Cologne, one hun- 
dred and fifty miles from the sea, is now a sea- 
port; Strasburg, three hundred miles inland, can 
receive boats of six hundred tons; and the tribu- 
tary river, the Main, has been deepened so that 
now Frankfort receives steamers from the Rhine. 
Three quarters of the through trade of Holland 
is German water-borne trade. Now the Dort- 
mund-Ems canal, which is one hundred and sixty- 
eight miles long, and can be used by ships of a 
thousand tons, gives an outlet, via the Rhine, at 
Emden. All this is the work of a patient, per- 
sistent, and economical people working under 
great natural disadvantages. / 
A As compared with America this is an unfruit- 

ful land, and, as I have noted, surrounded on all 
sides by powerful enemies. In 1902 Traugott 
Miiller estimated the value of Germany's pro- 
duction of wheat, potatoes, vegetables — the prod- 
ucts of the gardens and the fields, in short — at 
$605,000,000; the production of beef, mutton, 
pork at $669,500,000; of the dairies at $406,- 
000,000; of cotton, sugar, alcohol, wine, and 
wood at $322,000,000; or a total of $2,002,000,- 
000. The United States is seventeen times as 
large, but by no means seventeen times as pro- 
ductive. 

Germany, again, is divided into a number of 



CONCLUSION 583 

states, all, with the exception of Prussia, with its 
population of 40,000,000 out of the total of 65,- 
000,000, comparatively small. These states are 
not merely divided by legal and geographical 
lines, but by traditions, different ruling families, 
religion, tastes, habits, and manners, and even 
geologically. Bernhard Cotta, writing of Ger- 
many, says: "Geologically there is a Spain, an 
England, a Sweden, a Russia, a France, but no 
Germany." They are different individuals, not 
different members of the same family. They 
have been cemented together by coercion. . 

Over this whole country for three hundred 
years have swept all the fighting men of Europe. 
Until 1870 it was a tournament ground for the 
Swedes, Russians, French, Dutch, Belgians, 
Italians, Hungarians, English, and the various 
German states. It was shot over, till it is a 
wonder that there are any young birds, not to 
speak of old cocks and hens left, to begin with 
over again. 

A feature of the political situation, which 
scarcely enters into political calculations in Amer- 
ica, is the sharp division between Protestants 
and Catholics, with a political party of Cath- 
olics numbering one fourth of the total members, 
in the Reichstag. In 1905 there were 37,646,852 
Protestants and 22,109,644 Catholics in Ger- 



584 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

many, the Roman Catholics being in a majority 
in Baden, Bavaria, and Alsace-Lorraine. In the 
past these religious differences have entailed all 
the most repulsive features of war, waged to the 
point of extermination. "Lieber Rom als Lib- 
eral," is still a punning war-cry marking the dis- 
like of Rome and the fear of Socialism. 

With us religion has become largely an organ- 
ized attempt, using charity as patronage, to rec- 
oncile piety and plenty, with the result that 
with the exception of the Catholic Church deal- 
ing with the lately arrived immigrants, and the 
Methodists and Baptists dealing with the ig- 
norant masses, black and white, in the South, 
religion in the sense of an organized church has 
little hold upon the people, especially in the 
large cities. 

In America the indifference to religion is the 
result of suspicion. The congregations are too 
largely black-coated and white-collared, and the 
lay officers of the churches much too solemnly 
sleek and serenely solvent to attract the weak, 
the unfortunate, the sorrowing, and the sinner. 
The mere appearance of the congregation in a 
prosperous Protestant church in an American 
city is a mockery of Christianity. Any man 
who preaches to men who can own a seat in 
God's house is a craven opportunist. Until 



CONCLUSION 585 

the doors of the churches are open all the 
week, and the seats in the churches free, to 
claim that the Christ is there is little short of 
blasphemy. It is no wonder that those who 
need Him most, never dream of seeking for Him 
in these ecclesiastical clubs. 

In Germany half-baked thinking, following 
upon, and as the result of, the barracks and cor- 
poral methods of education, have turned the 
Protestant population from the churches. The 
slovenly and patchy omniscience of the partly 
educated, leads them to believe that they know 
enough not to believe. Renan, though a doubter 
himself, saw the weakness of this form of dis- 
belief w^hen he wrote: ^' There are in reality but 
few people who have a right not to believe in 
Christianity." \ 

The people living upon this ethnographical 
chess-board have been for centuries rather tribal 
than national, and are still rather philosophical 
than political, rather idealistic than practical, 
rather dreamy than adventurous. To organ- 
ize this population for self-support and self-de- 
fence, to ignore differences, racial and religious, 
to stamp out the jealousies of small rulers, re- 
quired severe measures, and we are all learning 
to-day that democracies are seldom severe with 
themselves. A tyrannical autocracy, led by 



/ 



586 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and Bis- 
marck, produced from this welter of discord the 
astonishing results of to-day. 

We have to-day, in an area of 208,780 square 
miles, 5,604 square miles representing the lately 
conquered territory of Alsace-Lorraine, a popu- 
lation of 64,903,423, of whom 1,028,560 are sub- 
jects of foreign powers. To defend this area 
there are to be, according to figures estimated 
even as this volume goes to press, a million men 
under arms in the army and navy. Their enor- 
mous progress in trade, in industry, in ship- 
building, is set out in full in every year-book, 
for the curious to ponder. In so short a time, 
on so poor a soil, in such a restricted space, with 
such a past of distress and disaster, and dealing 
with such conflicting interests, a like success in 
nation-building is unparalleled. 

Industrial and martial beehive though it 
would seem to be, there are provided for the 
native and the foreigner feasts of music, of art, 
and of study that cost little. There are quiet 
streams, lovely, lonely walks, and quaint towns 
that are nests of archaeological interestj In 
\ Weimar, in Stuttgart, in Schwerin, in Diissel- 
dorf , in Karlsruhe, not to mention Munich, Leip- 
sic, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfort, Hamburg, there 
are centres of culture. The best that the mind 



CONCLUSION 587 

of man creates is still spread out there as of 
yore for whomsoever will to partake, but ever in 
less abundance and with less enthusiasm. And 
these names are a mere fraction of the number of 
such places. 

The rivalries between the states is now to a 
large extent an elevating rivalry of culture, 
dotting the map of Germany with resting-places 
for the curious, the scholarly, or the sentimental 
traveller. You may have plain living and high 
thinking in scores of the cities and towns of Ger- 
many, and you will be considered neither an 
outcast nor an eccentric; indeed, you will find no 
small part of the population your companions. 

You may stroll for miles on the banks of that 
tiny stream the Zschopau, and expect to see 
sprites and nymphs, so hidden are its windings; 
and where in all the world will a handkerchief 
cover an Ulm, an Augsburg, a Rothenburg, 
Ansbach, Nuremberg, Wlirzburg, with their 
wealth of associations .^^ 

The Fugger family, of Augsburg, tell us again 
that there is nothing new in the world. Five 
hundred years ago they were millionaires. One 
of these Fuggers had a voice even in the election 
of Charles V, and we are still hard at it trying 
to keep our Fuggers from meddling in politics. 
Another Fugger, Marcus by name, wrote a cap- 



588 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ital book on the horse in the sixteenth century, 
and at the last horse-show at Olympia, in 1912, a 
Fugger came over from Germany and took away 
the first prize for officers' chargers. So far flung 
was their fame as money-lenders that usury was 
called "Fuggerei"! 

Heirs of great houses got out of hand then as 
now, and Duke Albert III of Bavaria married 
Agnes Bernauer, the barber's daughter, and even 
the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria ran off with 
Fraulein Welser. One citizen of Augsburg 
fitted out a squadron to take possession of Vene- 
zuela, which had been given him by the Emperor 
Charles V. For some reason the squadron did 
not sail; Lord Salisbury and President Cleve- 
land could have told this adventurous Augs- 
burger that he was better off at home! 
y Bishop Boniface, of Wiirzburg, was an Eng- 

lishman, and his father was a wheelwright. He 
put cart-wheels in his coat-of-arms, and they 
have remained to this day in the arms of the 
town, a fine reminder to snobbery that ancestry 
only explains, it cannot exalt. 



If 



"Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch'd on Alps, 
And pyramids are pyramids in vales." 

The atmosphere in these towns is one of re- 
pose. They are still wise enough to know that 



CONCLUSION 589 

the miraculous improvements in speed brought 
about by steam and electricity have not short- 
ened the journey of the soul to heaven by one 
second. They know that Socrates on a donkey 
really goes faster than Solly Goldberg in his 
sixty-horse-power motor-car. They are suspi- 
cious of the new cosmopolitan creed, that suc- 
cessful advertising endows a man with eternal 
life. Countless political quacks have been cari- 
catured, advertised, and cinematographed into 
familiarity, but wise men still read Plato and 
Aristotle. The penny press has not convinced ^ 
them that popularity is immortality; they rec- 
ognize popularity as merely glory paid in pennies. 
They partake to some extent of the patience of 
the Oriental. They suspect, as most men of 
wide intellectual experience do, that the man 
who cannot wait must be a coward at bot- 
tom, afraid of himself, or of the world, or of 
God. 

This is wholly true of many Germans, de- 
spite the clang of arms, the noise of steam-ham- 
mers, the shrieking locomotives, the puffing 
steamers, the clinking of their gold, and the 
shouting of their pedlers, now scattered all over 
the world. It is this combination, in the same ^ 
small area, of noise and repose; of political 
subserviency at home and sabre-ratthng abroad; 



590 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of close organization at home and colonizing 
inefficiency abroad; of moral and intellectual 
freedom, one might almost call it moral and 
intellectual anarchy these days, and at the 
same time submission to a domestic and social 
tyranny unknown to us, that makes even a 
timid author feel that he is discovering the 
Germans to his countrjanen, so little do they 
know of this side of German life. 

They are not at all what the Americans and 
the English think they are. They want peace, 
and we think they want war. The huge arma- 
ments are intended to frighten us, just as were 
the grotesquely ugly masks of the Chinese war- 
riors. They intend to frighten us all with their 
850,000 soldiers, their great fleet, their air-ships 
and aeroplanes, and when they go to Agadir 
again they hope to be able to stay there till 
their demands are granted. They are the last 
comers into the society of nations and they 
mean to insist upon recognition. But this de- 
mand is an artificial one so far as the great mass 
of Germans is concerned. It is the Prussian 
conqueror, and the small class, officer, official 
and royal, representing that conqueror, who are 
determined upon this course. They have uni- 
fied Germany, they have made the laws and 
forced obedience to them; and the heavily 



CONCLUSION 591 

taxed, hard-driven, politically powerless people 
are helpless. 

Nowhere has socialistic legislation been so 
cunningly and skilfully used for the enslave- 
ment of the people. No small part of every 
man's wages js paid to him in insurance; in- 
surance for unemployment, for accident, sick- 
ness, and old age. There is but faint hope of 
saving enough to buy one's freedom, and if the 
slave runs away he leaves, of course, all the 
premiurds he has paid in the hands of his master. 
A general uprising is guarded against by a re- 
doubtable force of officials, officers, and soldiers, 
whose very existence depends upon their de- 
fence of and upholding of the state under its 
present laws and rulers. 

Our grandfathers and fathers, some of them, 
talked and read of Saint-Simon, of Fourier, Rob- 
ert Owen, Maurice Kingsley, and the Brook 
Farm experiment, and believed, no doubt, that 
the dawn of the twentieth century would have 
extracted at least some balm from these theories 
for the healing of our social woes. They would 
rub their eyes in amazement were they to awake 
in 1912 to find more armed men, more ships of 
war, more fighting, more strikes and trade dis- 
putes, than ever before. Above all, they would 
be puzzled to find the nation which is most ad- 



592 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

vanced in the application of the theory of state 
sociahsm with the largest army, the heaviest 
taxation, and the second most formidable fleet. 

The library in which, as a small boy, I was 
permitted to browse, where I read those won- 
derful Black Forest Stories and my first serious 
novel. On the Heights, contained a bust of Goethe, 
and on the shelves were Fichte, Freytag, Spiel- 
hagen, Strauss, and a miscellaneous collection 
of German authors grave and gay, or perhaps 
melancholy were a better word, for even now I 
should find it hard to point to a German author 
who is distinctively gay. No visitor to that 
library, and they numbered many distinguished 
visitors, American and foreign, from Emerson 
and Alcott and George Macdonald to others 
less well known, dreamed that the serene mar- 
ble features of Goethe would be replaced by the 
granite fissures of the face of Bismarck; and 
that Auerbach's Black Forest Stories would be 
less known than Albert Ballin's fleet of mercan- 
tile ships. As I dream myself back to that big 
chair wherein I could curl up my whole person, 
and still leave room for at least two fair-sized 
dogs, I see as in no other way the almost unbe- 
lievable change that has come over Germany. 
The Black Forest Stories, Hammer and Anvil, 
The Lost Manuscript, Werther, Fichte, Kant, 



CONCLUSION 593 

Hegel, Schopenhauer, Strauss, Heine were Ger- 
many then; Bismarck, BaUin, and Krupp are 
Germany now. Germany was Hamlet then; 
Germany is Shylock, Shylock armed to the 
teeth, now. 

No nation can change in one generation, as has 
Germany, by the natural development of its 
innate characteristics; such a change must be 
forced and artificial to take place in so short a 
time. This is not only the internal danger to 
Germany itself, but the danger to all those 
superficial observers who point to Germany as 
having solved certain social and economic 
problems. She has not solved them by healthy 
growth into better ways; she has suppressed 
them, strangled them, suffocated them. /\ 

The heroes and heroines of my Black Forest 
Stories have been rudely stuffed into the uni- 
forms of officials, soldiers, factory hands, and 
Red Cross nurses. The toy-shops have been 
developed, on borrowed capital, into ship-build- 
ing yards and factories for guns and ammunition. 
The dreamer in dressing-gown and slippers has 
been forced into the cap and apron of the work- 
man. The small sovereigns have been fright- 
ened into allegiance to the war lord, whose 
shadow falls upon every corner of Germany. 

In this new scheme of things it soon became 



594 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

evident, that the individual was incompetent to 
take care of himself along lines best suited to 
the plans of his new conqueror, therefore part of 
his earnings were taken from all alike to provide 
against accident, sickness, unemployment, and 
old age, and thus, bind him fast to the chariot of 
his warrior lord. Germany, having given up the 
belief that the salvation of her own soul was 
of prime importance, became suspiciously con- 
cerned about the souls and bodies of the people. 
We are all to some extent following her example. 
The wise among us are sad, the capitalist and 
his ally the demagogue are seen everywhere all 
smiles, rubbing their hands, for the more people 
are made to believe that they can be, and ought 
to be, taken care of, the more the machinery is 
put into their hands, the more plunder comes 
their way, the more indispensable they are. 

The great majority of people who write or 
speak of Germany applaud this situation; let 
me frankly say, what everybody will be saying 
in twenty-five years, I deplore it. It is a purely 
artificial, incompetent, and dreary solution. 
JEven Hamlet were better than Shylock. 

Fortunately there is also a large and increas- 
ing class in Germany who distrust the situation. 
They point to the fact that technical education 
is producing an army of dingy artisans, who turn 



CONCLUSION 595 

out the cheap and nasty by the million, an edu- 
cation which chokes ideahsm and increases the 
growing flippancy in matters of faith and morals ; 
they sneer, and well they may, at the manu- 
factured art, the carpenter's Gothic architecture, 
the sickly Hterature, the decaying interest in 
scholarship; they find fewer and fewer candi- 
dates for exploration and colonization; they 
rankle under the series of diplomatic ineptitudes 
since Bismarck; they see France, Russia, and 
England antagonized and leagued against them, 
and their own alhes, Austria-Hungary and Italy, 
in a confused state of squabble with their neigh- 
bors; they are nervous and disquieted by the 
financial and industrial conditions; they con- 
demn whole-heartedly the political caste system 
by which much of the best material in Germany 
is barred from the councils and the diplomatic 
and executive activities of the nation; there are 
not a few who would welcome an inconclusive 
war that would, they think, put an end to this 
system, and make the ruler and the officials re- 
sponsible to the people; they wish to open the 
doors of this governmental, legislative, educa- 
tional, industrial hot-house, and give the nation 
a chance to grow naturally in the open air. 

The poHcy of making other people afraid of 
you must have an end, the policy of making 



596 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

others respect and like you can have no end. 
There is no question which is the natural law 
of national development. Neither for the in- 
dividual nor for a nation is it wholesome to in- 
crease antagonisms and to lessen the concilia- 
tory points of contact with the world. 

Many of the weaknesses, much of the strength 
of Germany are artificial. They have not 
grown, they have been forced. The very bar- 
renness of the soil, the ring of enemies, the soft 
moral and social texture of the population, have, 
so their little knot of rulers think, made neces- 
sary these harsh, artificial forcing methods. 

The outstanding proof of the artificiality of 
this civilization is its powerlessness to propa- 
gate. Germans transplanted from their hot- 
house civilization to other countries cease to 
be Germans; and nowhere in the world outside 
Germany is German civilization imitated, liked, 
or adopted. The German is nonplussed to find 
the Pole in the East, the Frenchman in the West, 
the Dane in the North, scoffing at his alte 
Kultur^ as he calls it, and he is irritated beyond 
measure by the German from America, who re- 
turns to the Vaterland to criticise, to sneer, and 
to thank God that he is an American, not a 
German citizen. Germans become English cit- 
izens, no Englishmen become Germans; mill- 



CONCLUSION 597 

ions of Germans have become Americans, no 
Americans become Germans. No other pop- 
ulation would be amenable to the Prussian 
methods that have made Germany, nor is there 
anywhere in the world a people demanding 
Prussian methods, while there are millions under 
the Prussian yoke who hate it. 

The German rhetoric to the effect that Ger- 
many is to save the world by Teutonizing the 
world, is laughable. Prussia is the ventrilo- 
quist behind this half-hearted boast. 

Werther, and Faust, and Lohengrin, are far 
more real than those scarecrows autocracy, 
bureaucracy, and militarism, triplets of straw, 
premature births, not destined to Hve, of which 
Germany boasts to-day as the most precocious 
children in the world. They are just that, pre- 
cocious children, teaching the pallid religion of 
dependence upon the state and enforcing the 
anarchical morality of man's despair of him- 
self. Our descendants will have Werther and 
Faust and Lohengrin, as the companions of their 
dreams at least, when that autocracy shall have 
been blown to the winds, when that bureau- 
cracy shall have dried up and wasted away,when 
that exaggerated militarism shall be but bleach- 
ing bones and dust. 

Who has not lived in Germany as a house of 



598 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

dreams, seen the Valkyrie race by, heard the 
swan song, wept with Werther and with Mar- 
guerite, smiled cynically with Mephistopheles, 
languished with the Palm Tree and the Pine of 
Heine; who has not sat at the feet of Germany 
as a philosopher, and traced the very fissures 
of his own brain in following thinking into 
thought; but who in all the world longs for this 
new Germany of the barracks, the corporal and 
the pedler? Germania as a malicious vestal 
clad in horrid armor and making mischief in 
the world is a very present danger; Germania 
with a torch lighting the world to salvation is 
a phantom, a ghost, seen by hasty and nervous 
observers, who rush out to proclaim an advent- 
ure that may excite a passing interest in them- 
selves. Her methods to-day are solution by suf- 
focation; no wonder those of us who loved her 
in our youth see in her a ghost to-day. I am 
thankful that I was her pupil when she had 
other things to teach, when she wore other 
robes, when she was modest, and not snatching 
at the trident of Neptune, nor clutching at the 
casque of Mars. 

"Wir wissen zu viel, wir wollen zu wenig," 
became the national complaint, and Germany 
has attempted to transform herself. She has 
succeeded in the transformation, but the trans- 



CONCLUSION 599 

formation is not a success. Even that learned 
English friend of Germany, Lord Haldane, 
does not see, or will not see, that a people 
thinking themselves into action, instead of de- 
veloping into action naturally, through action, 
must suffer from the artificiality of the proc- 
ess. Lord Haldane applauds their thought-out 
organization in industrial, commercial, and mil- 
itary matters, but he fails to mention the 
squandering of individual capacity and energy 
that has resulted in Germany 's growing depend- 
ence upon a wooden bureaucracy. Organiza- ^ 
tion is only good as a means ; it is stupefying as 
an end. Germany has organized herself into 
an organization, and is the most over-governed 
country in the world. What every democracy 
of free men wants is not as much, but as little, 
organization as possible compatible with eco- 
nomical administration of industry, the army, 
the navy, and the affairs of the state. You can 
think out a game of chess, but you cannot think 
out life ahead of the living of it without cramp- 
ing it and finally killing it. Life is to live, not 
to think, after all. Neither a nation nor an in- 
dividual has ever thought out the way to 
power. This is where the metaphysician in- 
variably fails when he mistakes thinking for 
living, when he mistakes organization, which 



600 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

can never be more than a mould for life, for life 
itself. To plan an army is not to produce one, 
however good the plan; even to plan a cam- 
paign, once you have an army, is to court dis- 
aster unless there is a living man to thrust the 
plan aside when the emergencies arise that make 
up the whole of life, but have nothing to do 
with organization. / 

If all men were tailors, or lawyers, or farmers, 
or miners, then we could think out an organiza- 
tion into which they would fit, but unfortunately 
for the metaphysician, all men are not categories; 
all men are men ! In like manner, if all men were 
cases, then government by lawyers would be 
successful, but men and women are neither 
categories nor cases. It is purely fantastic, the 
mere reasoned confusion of the philosopher, to 
point to Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel and their 
successors as the originators of Germany's prog- 
ress. If Germany had developed along those 
lines, she would be something quite different 
from what she is. The Great Elector, Frederick 
the Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck made Ger- 
many, and her philosophers and pedants are 
only responsible for the softness that made it 
possible. Metaphysicians and lawyers have 
their place, but they will inevitably ruin any 
people whom they are permitted to govern. 

The reader will perhaps look back through 



A 



CONCLUSION 601 

these pages to discover a contradiction. He will ^ 
seem to find evidence that Germany's position 
in the world called for just this present Germany, 
which is a factory town with a garden attached, 
surrounded by an armed camp. \ deny the con- 
tradiction. I have tried to analyze and to give 
the reasons for Germany's development along 
these meretricious and disappointing lines, but 
/ I am the last to admit that the outcome is satis- 
factory, or that the rest of the world should 
look to Germany to point out the way of salva- 
tion. A steaming orchid-house is not the place 
to go to learn to grow the fruits of the earth in 
their due season for the nourishment of a free 
people. You will find some brilliantly colored 
flowers there, in the gay uniforms of the arti- 
ficial tropics, but they shrink and shrivel in the 
open air. They have been trained to grow 
luxuriantly in this stifling atmosphere, but they 
feed no one, please no one, who will not consent 
to live in a glass house with them. 

Because a people is blindfolded, its preachers 
and pedagogues gagged, its officials subservient, 
is all the more reason why they should be easily 
led, but no reason at all for supposing that they 
will lead anybody else. 

I have said here and there that I have learned 
much, and that we all have much to learn from 
Germany. I permit myself to repeat it. She 



602 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

has shown us that the short-cut to the govern- 
ing of a people by suppression and strangulation 
results in a dreary development of mediocrity. 
She has proved again that the only safety in the 
world for either an individual or a nation is to 
be loved and respected, and in these days no 
one respects slavery or loves threats. 

From an American point of view, any sacrifice, 
any war, were better than the domination of the 
Prussian methods of nation-making. No nation 
should be by its traditions and its ideals more 
ready to arm itself, and to keep itself armed if 
necessary for years, against the possibility of 
the transference of such methods to the Amer- 
ican continent than the United States of North 
America. 

"Theuer ist mir der Freund, doch auch den Feind kann ich 

niitzen," 
Zeigt mir der Freund, was ich kann, lehrt mir der Feind was ich 

soil," 

writes Schiller. 

We Americans have much to learn from both 
our friends and our enemies. We have both in 
Germany, and we should cultivate the temper of 
mind which profits by the encouragement of our 
friends and the criticism of our foes. 






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